Surfacing
by Jane D2
Summary: "The retraining of your mind has been in the Vulcan way, so you may not understand feelings. But as my son, you have them. They will surface." Set between "The Voyage Home" and "The Final Frontier"
1. Chapter 1

"_It is the judgement of this Council that you be given the duties for which you have repeatedly demonstrated unswerving ability: the command of a starship."_

Words, so momentous in their significance they were almost incomprehensible, swirled in his brain. He reached for understanding; his ears ringing with applause. A hundred memories blurred past his eyes – the faces of Khan and of Kruge; the flames of Genesis; Morrow in the Starfleet officers' lounge; Styles (_"You'll never sit in the Captain's chair again"_); the death fire of his ship; a moment of laughter and release in the cold waters of San Francisco Bay. And even as the buzz of excitement swelled around him, he turned, eyes seeking the one person with whom this moment needed to be shared.

Who wasn't there.

At least, not entirely.

* * *

"I am still," he said pointedly, rather less than four days later, "on shore leave, you know. You remember shore leave, don't you, Commodore?"

"I remember it well," Wesley returned, pleasantly. "And you remember orders, right?"

_I'm sure the Admiral will recognise the necessity of keeping discipline in any chain of command._

Kirk looked sideways, briefly, at the climbing equipment he had purchased and the holo of Yosemite, mentally shook himself and managed a grin. It was, after all, what he had signed up for. More – what he had dreamed of, longed for with a bitter-sharp yearning, those years of working a desk in the highest echelons of comfort and safety.

"I am at your command, sir," he said, both easily and accurately.

"Just as I thought," the other said, genially. "We have a situation in Cochrane."

Kirk's eyebrows rose. Cochrane House meant spies. Back in the day, Starfleet used to run an interplanetary espionage division, which everyone knew was involved in interplanetary espionage because it was called IED. As extra-terrestrial relationships developed, became more sophisticated and strengthened, the middle initial was quietly dropped, and the team was officially renamed "Intelligence Division". This didn't stop everyone knowing that it was engaged in interplanetary espionage and, in addition, gave rise to a number of well-worn 'Fleet jokes about the nature of the intelligence involved – both of the relevant personnel and of external stakeholders of varying kinds. In the end, HQ rather forlornly decided on an official title by reference to the building in which the division was housed. Cochrane House had actually been demolished some time previously, and in fact the operations it had housed were now masterminded from a block inside the central HQ complex, but this didn't stop the division being referred to as "Cochrane House" and it didn't stop everyone knowing that they ran interplanetary espionage programmes.

"Cochrane have a long term contact based in Romulus," Wesley continued. Kirk didn't react. Running spy-rings beyond the Neutral Zone was in flagrant breach of every Starfleet Treaty in the alphabet and everyone assumed it was going on. He had known himself, of course, from his own years in the Admiralty. He waited.

"It's gone quiet," Wesley said, simply.

"For how long?"

"Six weeks, altogether. We knew something had happened, but Cochrane wanted to make sure, and then of course we've had to deal with the probe. In fact, we thought for some time that the probe's transmissions were responsible for losing contact with Romulus – which they were, of course, but then we've not heard anything since and all other comparable contacts have been restored."

Kirk digested this, and then asked the obvious question.

"And why are you telling me this? I can't possibly take the _Enterprise _to Romulus, even if she were completely fitted out and ready to go – which, I need to tell you, Bob, she's not at all, and I was going to ask –"

Wesley waved him down.

"Of course you can't take the ship. No one's suggesting that. It's not that kind of mission, Jim. We want you to go yourself."

Which put Kirk in a slightly difficult position. After what had happened in the Council Chamber not four days earlier, he wasn't about to start his new career as the first demoted admiral in Starfleet history by disobeying orders. He was content with where he had ended up but had no desire to end up as second lieutenant. On the other hand –

"Bob, I've not really had the training, and it might not be the best use of my time, especially given that someone needs to supervise the re-fit of the _Enterprise._ On which subject –"

"Cochrane have developed a long range shuttlecraft for this sort of mission, you see," Wesley said, as though Kirk hadn't spoken. "There's only the prototype, but it's been thoroughly tested over a long distance and rigorous conditions. It can travel from here to Romulus and back, shielded and cloaked; it can even fire a limited number of photon torpedoes and it has transporter facilities and warp drive."

Diverted, he said,

"That's impressive. How have they managed to generate sufficient power to cloak for that period of time?"

"By sacrificing space. That's the drawback. It's only big enough for three people."

"Is that the size of the team you want to send?"

"No. The plan was, in this instance, to send a two-man team, with room to pick up a third – if, for example, the contact needs repatriating. And that means two people, alone and dependent on each other for a very long period of time. Cochrane took three teams through a whole year's training for this sort of eventuality. All six were subject to significant screening and selection processes before they were even taken on to the training programme. There was a very heavy emphasis on psych profile compatibility and they invested hugely in the three pairs who made it."

"What happened?" Kirk asked. He had a feeling about what was coming next, and didn't like it much.

"One pair failed the training, one succeeded and is currently heavily under cover in a mission in the Delta sector. One half of the third pair has just been seriously injured in a climbing accident at Yosemite. Idiots. Why they let him go after all that and why he was free-climbing, I have no idea."

Kirk opened his mouth, thought briefly, and then shut it again.

Wesley thoughtfully studied the holo of Yosemite on Kirk's desk and turned a bland smile on its owner.

"That's why we came to you."

"To catch me," Kirk said, also looking at the holo, "before I leave for Yosemite tomorrow?"

"Because," Wesley said, his manner suddenly deadly serious, "we need to get to Romulus immediately and there's no longer the luxury of time to develop the sort of rapport and dependency we need in the requisite two man team. But we don't need to, now you and Spock are back in the fold. The two of you invented rapport. There is no other pairing in the quadrant to touch you and you're even here on Earth, between missions."

"The _Enterprise –"_

"- needs more work. You said it yourself, Jim." ("Well, I certainly tried to," muttered Kirk). "We rushed her out, somewhat, I'll admit. The Council very much wanted the grand gesture, after the business with the probe, after that ridiculous accusation by the Klingons – a show of unity and of course the most genuine of thank yous – but I'd not be surprised if you tell me there's the odd nut that needs tightening."

Kirk reflected that the ridiculous accusation by the Klingons might have found a rather different audience had the _Bounty _not diverted to twentieth century San Francisco en route to the hearing, but he thought it politic not to dwell on the point. There was a more important issue at hand.

"Bob," he said, very slowly, "you know – Spock and I have some adjusting to do, ourselves. Wouldn't exactly call either of us an odd nut, but –"

His voice tailed away. He'd had a while to get his head round the problem – a couple of rather hazardous trips in a Klingon Bird of Prey, a stroll round Sausalito – but the truth was he hadn't actually quite opened up to himself about it in the quiet of his own quarters. So he wasn't going to talk to Bob Wesley about it.

Wesley's eyes were remarkably clear as they bent on the most recently demoted flag officer in Starfleet. He said, reflectively,

"It was Harry's idea, actually."

Kirk looked up.

"Harry Morrow? What idea?"

"Harry's idea that you and Spock should go. We were throwing some suggestions around, couple of days back, when we got the news about that idiot Jacobson getting multiple fractures free-climbing El Capitan." Kirk winced. "At one point, we were going to pull the whole mission; then we started coming up with names of Cochrane agents who hadn't been specifically trained but we thought could probably pull it off. Palmer said no, she wouldn't hear of it, it had to be a real team, two people who could operate from a place of absolute trust and knowledge and Harry just slammed his fist on the table and said "Jim Kirk". He said you'd gone to see him just before that little burglary business you and your crew pulled off; said that you were going after Spock. That he was your responsibility – something like that. You know Harry, he wouldn't care to admit to being moved, but I think you made something of an impression."

"Must have been why he said no," Kirk said, very drily.

Wesley laughed. He got up and put a hand on Kirk's shoulder.

"I'll see myself out, Jim. You and Spock, in my office, tomorrow morning at 0900 hours. Thanks for the drink."

Alone, Kirk contemplated the holo and climbing equipment, and then got up and, with an air of some finality, stowed them in a cupboard behind his desk. He then sent a comm to Spock, asking him for a meeting at 0830 hours, which would allow him time to break the news ahead of the briefing. He regarded without enthusiasm the cold remains of dinner, which Wesley had interrupted, and then made himself a coffee and took it to his favourite seat, overlooking the bay.

Was he wrong to be worried? About this mission, or any other?

Was he wrong to be worried about Spock?

He knew reassurance when he saw it, and for Wesley to have delivered that little speech meant that he had read something in Kirk's eyes, something perhaps a little removed from the stressed encounter in the officers' lounge when he had said to Harry Morrow – oh yes, he remembered - said with an absolute certainty and clarity now oddly missing from his dealings with his First Officer, "_If Spock has an eternal soul, then it's my responsibility. As surely as if it were my very own."_

Where was that certainty now?

The truth was that it felt like a very long time since _I have been and always shall be your friend._

The truth was that the elation which had followed _Your name is Jim _had faded somewhat, somewhere between the harsh dust of Vulcan and the astonishing resolution of the Council chamber. What followed had been little more than _It is the human thing to do _when a rescue plan for Chekov had proved necessary_, _and an exchange of glances in front of a roomful of cheers and crowded chaos. He had overheard Spock tell Sarek that the crew of the _Enterprise _were his friends, and he had felt warmed by it, felt for the first time that Spock had aligned himself in his old place, on the tightrope he had walked for decades with deceptive apparent ease – and occasional tragedy – between Vulcan and humanity.

What had been almost entirely missing from the whole formula was any real resumption of what had led Wesley to say _The two of you invented rapport. _

Which was cause for concern, given the mission to Romulus. Kirk spared a thought for the weeks ahead, side by side with the person who had said _In that event, the probabilities are that our mission will fail; _and _It would not be proper to refer to you as Jim while you are in command, Admiral. _

But it would get better. It had to. Spock just needed time.

What was it he had said to McCoy, on the bridge of the Bird of Prey? _It'll come back to him._

Perhaps the mission might even help.

He finished the coffee and went to bed, though sleep eluded him for longer than usual.

* * *

"The best bet, according to the briefing, is this Romulan, Marillus."

Kirk had been slightly relieved to discover that the _Polaris_ was not – quite – as small as his imagination had led him to think. In addition to the small flight deck, there were three cabins – admittedly, each approximately the size of the head in his quarters in the _Enterprise, _but comfortable enough for sleeping purposes and, given that he and Spock were alone, it was just about possible to use the third cabin to eat or work away from the flight deck, to allow for a break in proximity or simply in surroundings.

He wondered, a little, where the name had come from, and whether HQ knew that_ Polaris_ was a double star.

Spock said,

"Marillus also appears to have been in contact with Commander Colton until immediately before contact with HQ was lost. This indicates that he will have the most recent information as to relevant developments."

Kirk regarded the monitor in front of him without enthusiasm.

"It's a hell of a long way to go with a lead as slim as that."

"Starfleet is naturally anxious that an instance of unlawful personnel deployment in contravention of intergalactic treaty provisions should escape detection by the Romulan authorities."

"It's a needle in a haystack."

Spock lifted an eyebrow and turned to adjust some controls, and Kirk's heart sank. The metaphor had been a deliberate bait, and Spock, the old familiar companion of a thousand shuttle flights, had evaded capture. Before Genesis, the Vulcan would have said _Sir, the Romulan contact is not a sewing implement and the Romulan homeworld is not a construct of dried grass _and he himself would have rolled his eyes and said _Come on, Spock. You know all about needles. They are what camels pass through when the wealthy get stuck half way, right? _and Spock would have said _Your introduction of a metaphor developed in mainstream Earth religious scripture is interesting but not, if you will forgive me, Captain, entirely germane to the conversation, _and he would have said _You know what, Spock? Everything's germane when you're stuck on a shuttlecraft for six weeks without a decent drink, _and Spock would have said _Vulcans do not- _and Kirk would have cut him off and said _It's your move, Spock. Checkmate in five, _and Spock would have failed entirely to conceal a mixture of amusement and dismay and would have pretended that his rapid re-assessment of the chess board was in reality an abstract review of biblical metaphors.

Kirk had not, so far, introduced the subject of chess. Not on this journey across so many unknowns.

It had been chess, after all, which had got him into this. He had, on occasion, over the years, occasionally found himself wondering in a moment of whimsy what his life would have been like had Amanda not taught her son this quintessentially human game. Or had he himself grown up with a preference for cards, as Sam had. It was over black kings and white bishops that he had first, very tentatively, reached out to his First, and over a white knight holding a black king in check that he had first begun to understand how to plot the moves of Vulcan facial expression.

He looked now at Spock's slightly averted face, as the Vulcan studied the readings on the navigation panel and felt a wash of fond nostalgia, regardless of circumstance and of his friend's current capacity to respond - thought affectionately, _You play a very irritating game of chess, Mr Spock. _And it was only in the instant of Spock turning, eyebrow on the climb, that he realised he had spoken aloud.

Kirk-like, he regained the ground immediately, thought to himself – _Use it._

Spock said,

"Are you making a general reference, Captain, or are you deliberately quoting comments you have made to me in the past?"

He frowned slightly, thinking this over, and asked, curiously, venturing for the first time, very gingerly, into the place they had not yet stepped, not since Mount Seleya,

"Do you remember me doing so?"

Spock said, "In fact, you have used that expression to me on a number of different occasions, the first of which was Stardate 1312.4, seven point two light days from Delta Vega."

Kirk caught his breath. Gary. A pair of silver eyes. _Pray that you die easily… _Spock was right, that was when it had all began. Chess had started just before Delta Vega, and Gary had died and he'd promoted Spock without hesitation, and that was inextricably bound up in a Vulcan face bent over an illogical risk to a black queen.

"And you remember that, verbatim? Spock – do you remember _everything_? And if you do – how?"

It was a challenge. _Let me in, Spock, _he thought, watching the closed face. And then the Vulcan said, very levelly,

"After the _fal-tor-pan, _I was given assistance by the Masters to retrieve full mnemonic functionality. I am, as you know, the sole living subject of the _fal-tor-pan _but the techniques involved have been handed down to students at Gol and, in every generation, the most able have been taught the ancient disciplines in order that support could be given in the eventuality of the need arising."

Kirk ignored his reaction to the word _Gol, _like a light blow landing on a long healed scar which covers a wound which was never properly cleansed in the first place. "Lucky for you that they had the foresight," he said, feelingly. "Lucky for me, too." Spock showed no reaction to the offering implicit in the second half of this remark, and Kirk continued, regardless, "So what do they involve, exactly, these techniques?"

On the _Bounty_, heading (had they then known it) to a park in twentieth century San Francisco, Spock had said to McCoy in response to a similar question _It would be impossible to discuss the subject without a common frame of reference. _This time, he spoke in a manner both more robust and at the same time less dismissive, as though he were granting Kirk, at least, the right to ask the question, but also allowing him the credit to be able to appreciate that true understanding was beyond his reach.

"Captain, I appreciate your interest in my well-being, but the request is illogical since experiential cognizance is impossible."

But it was the first, small window which had opened, and Kirk pressed on with two simple words,

"Try me."

Spock regarded him and appeared to reach an inner decision. "Essentially, during the process of the transfer of the _katra, _the conscious link is suspended between the fact of memory and the ability to interpret and access empirical sensation."

"Meaning," Kirk ventured, "that the memory itself isn't lost but it's subconscious."

Spock adjusted some controls on the panel and turned fully to face Kirk, as though resigning himself to the conversation.

"In the human race," he said carefully, "most memory is subconscious, because your species does not have eidetic recall. There are doubtless incidents in your own childhood, Captain, of which you are now entirely oblivious, yet if your mother were to describe them to you, you might well recall them on an empirical basis, by which I mean that you would remember, at least perhaps partially, the perspective of experience, as opposed to receiving and processing the relevant information from a witness. There are other incidents from the past, the memory of which humans will never recover without a different type of assistance, the nature of which is beyond the capacity of members of a non-telepathic species, where memories remain inaccessible even with the prompting of a witness. With that prompting, you would be able to learn that they took place and describe them to third parties, but you would still lack experiential, personal memory."

Kirk nodded.

"And this is what happened when your _katra _was being held by McCoy – it meant he couldn't really access who you were, despite the mind-meld."

"That is, essentially, correct."

"But he did – I mean, there were times…" Kirk's voice tailed away. He was in Spock's quarters, that nightmare day they came back from Genesis; "_Take me home, Jim"; _McCoy a dead weight in his arms.

Spock would clearly rather be calculating warp speed formulae than having this conversation. He said, in the tone of one conjugating irregular verbs,

"In an instance of particular requirements or acute awareness, it appears possible to access critical mnemonic data or experience."

_When I really needed to reach you, I managed, somehow._

Kirk, caught between a certain acute awareness of his own and an ancient irresistible amusement, bit back a grin at Spock's so obvious reluctance to venture on this particular conversational pathway. But he might never have this chance again, out in the boundless quiet of space, less than a metre apart from each other, on their own particular journey, and he couldn't afford to let the Vulcan off the hook.

"And you're telling me that after the _fal-tor-pan, _that barrier was removed."

"That is incorrect, Captain."

Kirk let the words into his brain for several seconds before he reacted.

"_In_correct? Are you serious? What are you saying, Spock?"

Spock steepled his fingers, another step back in time for his captain, and Kirk thought _I guess that gesture crosses the mnemonic barrier _but his attention was focused on what was to come. Which was just as well, because he was braced for the truth.

"The experts at Gol who have studied the disciplines are able to reach into the mind, after the refusion, and access the memory in its entirety. They are then able to provide access to the subject – in other words, to allow the subject to understand and re-learn what has passed."

"Why," Kirk asked, uncertain other than in the fact that he wouldn't like the answer, "why is that different from what I said?"

"Captain, to understand the process it is necessary to revisit my analogy of childhood memory and the difference between experiential memory and didactic memory."

Kirk turned and looked out of the main viewer, at the passing stars. He remembered, suddenly, for no reason, the transformation of the Mutara Nebula when the Genesis device had been activated – one minute rainbow streams of swirling cloud, the next minute the black clarity of deep space, the familiarity of the constellations and the birth of a new planet. He swallowed.

"You are telling me that the students at Gol accessed the memories of your entire life and re-taught them to you?"

"Essentially, yes. I was not under the impression, Captain," Spock added, sounding, to Kirk's ear, for the first time, as though he understood, at least in part, the direction and bearing of the conversation, as though it mattered, as though it had any relevance to him, "that you were dissatisfied with the proficiency of that teaching."

"No," he said, "no, Spock. Not dissatisfied." He smiled, briefly, and ran a hand over his face. "Just going to check the readings on the power supply" and he got up and went to the back of the craft. Spock would know it was a guise for privacy, but he didn't care, he desperately needed space to process what he had just heard. The fact that he now understood, that the distances of the past weeks were clear, that he had been right – all his instincts about Spock proved, once again, unerring – all this was of no comfort at all. The Vulcan was here, physically unharmed, his future restored to him – a gift beyond what Kirk would have dreamed possible when he was looking at Spock's burned face and blind farewell through a glass barrier in the engineering room of the ship he had now lost. But the future wasn't the same as the past. Kirk was very far from sure that the ancient expertise of the teachers of Gol made up for the fact that, to all intents and purposes, Spock had not manned the bridge with him for the historic five year mission of the _Enterprise, _had not stood with him in the basement of a twentieth century New York mission, had not wandered the tunnels of Janus VI. He could probably quote every line he'd ever spoken, faultlessly, but he had not been there. He had been taught his life. He had not lived it.

What did that mean for this mission, for the ship? What did it mean for Kirk?

Kirk found himself, after an astonishing turn of events, restored to what he had wanted most in the Universe, what he had lost and had seemed most inaccessible – his ship, Spock by his side. But it was not the _Enterprise _of the past. This was not the ship which had borne him to the Neutral Zone and back, been shelter from a thousand hostile forces, been flesh of his flesh. She bore the same name and she beckoned him to believe in that promise, but he'd already discovered that she had more than a few loose nuts and bolts. And now Spock. What else, beside his first ship, lay dead on Genesis? What did it mean, if you had to be re-taught by the Vulcan Masters everything you'd ever done – what did it mean for the remembered touch of mind on mind, the absolute knowledge of another being – for _I have been and always shall be…_?

Standing by the power console, figures flashing, eyes unseeing, Kirk remembered, suddenly and keenly, that he was older than the young starship captain who had once been invested with the five year mission. That he had had precisely four days of shore leave since the Council hearing, that before that there had been the whales, Vulcan, Genesis, David – no respite. He was so tired. And now – this.

Behind him, Spock said,

"On Stardate 1312.4, immediately after your comment on my chess game, I suggested to you that irritation was a human emotion and therefore not one within my range of experience."

Kirk turned and stared. Was this Vulcan reassurance? Was it an offer to learn, to re-visit – what had Spock called it? – experiential memory? Was it both? Either way, no way was he letting it pass.

"That's only what you said, Spock. It wasn't what you meant."

Spock lifted an eyebrow.

"Neither of us, Captain, is perfectly placed to know what I meant."

Kirk let a smile develop.

"An interesting suggestion, First Officer. I know exactly what you meant because I (not you, according to your own argument) – I'm the one who spent five years in rather close proximity to you. I know damn well you experience irritation and what you really meant was that you were pleased I was losing the game." And had the satisfaction of seeing Spock actually listen, take this in, consider whether it might actually be true and if so, what inferences could be drawn – and the equal satisfaction of seeing him come back for battle, as Kirk had seen him do a thousand times before.

"It is at least possible," Spock countered, "that if we revisited our combined memories of that period of time from this perspective that you might have to admit the occasional error in your own perspective, Captain."

"Perhaps," Kirk said. "Perhaps I might. That might be rather – illuminating." He was still smiling, aware of a rush of optimism which had washed him to a very different place from that moment of weariness in the back of the _Polaris. _The journey might be a challenge, but he and Spock had faced worse.

After all, he had six weeks.

And at that moment, the console beeped. Kirk looked up sharply. Spock said,

"We are still in Federation space." He nodded and Spock opened the channel and said,

"_Polaris _here."

"_Polaris, _this is HQ," said Bob Wesley's voice. "We've had a slight change of plan, gentlemen."

Kirk's eyes met Spock's. He was aware, of all contrary things, of an immediate disappointment. Little as he wanted to take the _Polaris _to Romulus, he had just grasped the potential of time alone with Spock, the possibility of rediscovery – even of the chance to understand better, second time round, their own, personal two-man mission. Even in that moment, he wondered if Spock understood, agreed even. He wondered whether, if you lost your _katra_ and then went through _fal-tor-pan, _and had your mind re-trained the Vulcan way and had to be taught that your former captain thought you played an irritating game of chess – he wondered if you could still, under those circumstances, access telepathic contact with a member of an alien species who had once been your closest friend.

"We're sending you a ship mate. He's on the _Columbia _and will rendezvous with you this side of the Neutral Zone at 1330 hours. I'm sending you through the coordinates now."

"That," said Kirk, "will make the journey decidedly cosy. If anyone's allowed to join the party, why did it have to be Spock and me in the first place?"

"We're concerned about the possible situation on Romulus, Jim," the communication console said. "HQ have reason to suspect you may need medical back-up, and given the length of your service with McCoy, there's no need for concern about your ability to make the trip without murdering each other. Give the doctor my regards. Wesley out."


	2. Chapter 2

"Well, isn't this fun?" McCoy said, leaning back in his chair.

_He's going to say it, _Kirk thought.

"Just like old times."

_He's said it._

Why was it that both his senior officers were so predictable? McCoy was so stubbornly himself, and Spock so stubbornly someone else. It was as though they were doing it on purpose. Although, to be fair, it was hard to criticise McCoy, under the circumstances. Not for being himself, and not for realising that being stuck on the _Polaris _with someone who looked just like his First Officer, while a ship which bore his own ship's name hung in orbit with doors which failed to open – that nothing about this was the slightest bit like old times.

Shortly after the rendezvous with the _Columbia, _Spock had requested time for meditation and Kirk had agreed, suggesting that he also took the opportunity to sleep, which they would have to do in shifts. He had a suspicion that, as they got further into Romulan space and their journey became more hazardous, he would hear more about the Vulcan capacity to manage without sleep, and he was determined that, at least at this stage of the mission, Spock was properly rested. He thought that the limited resources of the shuttle could best be managed by a rota, in any case.

He had every intention of continuing his conversation with Spock. McCoy was a doctor, not a Vulcan, and he was banking on the CMO's very human need for sleep.

The blue Georgian eyes were missing little.

"So, Jim, how's it going, second time around?"

"Second time around?" Kirk was genuinely puzzled.

"Not much different from the rapturous welcome he gave us after that brainwashing he bought into at Gol," McCoy said, causing Kirk to shoot a rapid glance towards the back of the shuttle, the spec of the sound-proofing and his knowledge of Vulcan hearing equally at the forefront of his mind.

"Bones, for God's sake..."

"Same disciplines, same cult, same old warped approach to life," McCoy continued, without lowering his voice, entirely unperturbed. "That's where he was being looked after, you know, after that refusion business on Seleya. Stands to reason, you'd get the same result. Oh, not that I'd trade, you understand. Better running around in a white robe talking to five decimal points than stuck inside my head, thank you very much. And if you swear not to let on, I'll admit to preferring the quadratic equations he calls conversation to – well, to the alternative. But what are you going to do now, Jim, without VGer to shock him back to what Vulcans have the nerve to call normal?"

Kirk looked at McCoy and then back at the viewer.

"It's not quite the same. He just needs time. It'll come back to him."

"That's what you said on the ship." McCoy's eyes were suddenly very blue, focusing on his captain. "Jim – did you and he ever talk about Gol, anyway?"

Kirk said shortly, "He moved on, Bones, you saw it yourself."

"Thought not."

"You got something to say, doctor, this is as good a time as any. Till Spock comes out of meditation, it's just you and me and the Neutral Zone."

"That's what worries me," McCoy grumbled, "damn fool mission. Whose brilliant idea was it to start running spy rings in Romulus, who thought it was a good idea to get a few more people killed on top of whatever fiasco we'll find when we get there, and what the hell happened to my shore leave?"

"That all you have to say?"

"No, actually," McCoy's tone changed, and he looked directly at his captain. "Don't you think it's time you and Spock started actually talking to each other, instead of you just hoping to God that half of what he says isn't what he actually means? It's an odd sort of basis for a friendship, if you ask me, let alone running a ship or even a shuttle, and frankly, unless and until he gets his head round what happened in Gol, he's always going to get tugged back, when the going gets tough, like he is now, to being a high functioning library database."

Kirk was silent. If you had asked him, he might have said that what made Spock Spock was the inherent contradiction of his two halves, that it wasn't something you could label in a convenient box, that if you sorted it all out and added it all up and divided it by two, it wouldn't capture the unique essence which was his First Officer. That sometimes, you managed very well on hoping to God that half of what he said wasn't actually what he meant. On the other hand, this might just the journey he was planning to embark on with Spock. When McCoy was asleep, of course.

McCoy case another shrewd look at Kirk and said, "And since we've got a few minutes…" and started a rather long-winded description of his abortive plans for shore leave, which seemed to have involved the ship's chief engineer, a trip to the Scottish Highlands and an improbable amount of alcohol. Kirk made a mental note to himself to ensure that Scotty was in a fit state to ensure that the _Enterprise _was in a fit state, and started to consider what he was actually going to say to Spock.

Some of the things he was not going to say passed through his mind.

"Spock, do you remember meeting me in sickbay after your pon farr?" Not a good place to start.

"Spock, can we talk about what you meant when you said that you felt ashamed when you felt friendship for me?" Perhaps later in the journey for that one, too.

"Spock, could I have stopped you going to Gol? Should I have stopped you going to Gol? Why did you go, really? And why did you leave? Do you remember?"

McCoy was right; they had never talked about it. How much more chance was there now, here on this shuttle, hurtling through Romulan space, undetectable by any Romulan eye, with an even more impenetrable cloak obscuring his friend?

He refocused his mind, caught a mention of "Romulan ale" and smiled slightly. Perhaps McCoy was right, after all – it was good to remember the things in life which didn't change.

There was, of course, no question of any alcoholic souvenirs making the return journey on the _Polaris._

* * *

Four and a half hours later, McCoy had retired to one of the cabins and given them the benefit of a not inconsiderable monologue on the subject of its inadequacies. Spock had looked to all intents and purposes as if McCoy were not, in fact, on the _Polaris _at all, and Kirk bit back a grin and edged a small distance back to _old times. _It seemed fair to assume that sleep had come, fifteen minutes after the last colourful epithet, and he turned to Spock, with an air of one who had decided what to say and who wanted to make the most of the time he had. Both of which would have been accurate descriptions.

"Spock," he said, carefully, noting that the Vulcan had stilled, had clearly been expecting this, but having little energy to spare just then from making sure he got the words right, "Spock, let's start with where we were. I said you played an irritating game of chess and you said I first made that comment just before Delta Vega."

Spock lifted an eyebrow and nodded.

"Well, if your teachers at - at Mount Seleya" – his voice stuck at the word _Gol – _later for that – "have earned their stripes, then you'll remember – well, everything. I'll confess I don't, verbatim, but I do remember talking to you in the Delta Vega control room. You were disagreeing with Liz Dehner's prognosis. She thought Gary wouldn't hurt us; you thought he would; I asked how you knew, when she didn't. You said something, something like –"

"_Because she feels. I don't. All I know is logic. In my opinion, we'll be lucky if we can repair this ship and get away in time."_

Kirk stared. Even if he hadn't trusted absolutely in Spock's assurances of perfect recall, he would have known that the line was word perfect. On the one hand, he was back there, standing in the planet's control room, Spock with a rifle in his hand, himself resentful, torn between terror for Gary and the threat to his ship, unaccepting of Spock's solution. On the other hand, they were words spoken in another man's voice. He could see it, in Spock's eyes – the very act of calling up the memory somehow meant he knew it wasn't his. His determination faltered. But only momentarily. He was committed to this – was somehow convinced that it was the best thing for Spock, as well as for himself.

"Yes, that's what you said. But it wasn't true, was it?"

"Captain." Spock spoke in a tone part warning, part a Vulcan version of frustration which almost raised a smile from Kirk. "This will be a futile exercise if you persist in approaching all past interactions with me from an anthropomorphic perspective. I am not Terran. I do not have human feelings. I said that I do not feel and that all I know is logic because that is the case."

"Spock, this is an easy one. I know you didn't mean it because you told me so. Afterwards. After Gary died, you told me that you felt for him. I remember it quite clearly. And so, presumably, do you."

Spock was quiet for a minute. Then, as if making his captain an offer, he said,

"Captain, there are times when, if one lives with members of another species, it is necessary to adopt certain cultural and linguistic mores."

"You're not another species, Spock. You're half human."

Spock lifted an eyebrow.

"My mother is human and I am of human descent. But my upbringing, my education, my home planet and my perspective are all Vulcan. Can you not accept that?"

Kirk wanted to say, "_And the bullying, the rejection, the loneliness – also Vulcan?" _but he didn't. Instead, he feinted back.

"Then tell me about the adoption of certain cultural and linguistic mores."

"I would argue that it is the responsibility of the alien, in any culturally mixed community or circumstance, to attempt a form of discourse where there is an approximation to a mutual philosophical framework."

Kirk considered this.

"Define approximation, First Officer. If you said you felt for Gary and you now say that was not strictly accurate, what did you actually mean?"

Spock looked back at him, almost out of another man's eyes, a look of kings in check and bishops in peril. Kirk stared back, willing there to be something more behind the eyes, looking for a distant movement of surrender. The Vulcan said, quite gently,

"I was able to appreciate the situation in which Lieutenant-Commander Mitchell found himself. I was able to understand the challenges he faced after the mutation took place and although my preference and inclination would be to believe that his choices would not have been mine, it was evident that his mental faculties were insufficient to resist. The fact of his different heritage was not a matter for blame."

"In other words," Kirk said, focusing on the face opposite him and not allowing Spock's words to sweep him back to another loss, the remembered pain for another friend, "in other words, you felt for him."

"That is not actually the case, sir," Spock said, and Kirk thought, _is the return to the language of command an emphasis on denial? Or a distancing, a signal of discomfort with the conversation? _"You are associating the phrase with an emotional reaction. It is entirely possible to acquire an understanding and appreciation of beings and circumstances without the intrusion of sentiment, and in fact this is a common development for those living in extra-terrestrial communities. It is not necessary to rely on parallels to my own situation. Dr McCoy's predilection for emotional reaction is a phenomenon familiar to us both. Yet Dr McCoy is capable of observing, understanding and analysing the behaviour of bacteria, animal and alien species without overtly sentimentalising the situation. It is, however, the case," he added, "that this is not, unfortunately, invariably so with regard to the doctor, and another example might have been more apt. I apologise."

The appalled realisation that Spock was likening his sympathy for Mitchell to McCoy's observations on _bacillus subtilis_ was tempered by the unexpected humour of Spock's final interpolation, but even then, Kirk wondered, eyes searching Vulcan features for a sign, could the comment simply be intended to be taken at face value?

What made a person who they were, anyway? Once you took away memory, and then you taught a person what had happened to them and overlaid the experience with your own interpretation (_that time the ship's First Officer died, that would have been interesting to you in the same way that the ship's CMO would have been fascinated by observing bacterial laboratory experiments) – _who were you, really? Was there such a thing as the essence of a being? Kirk supposed he had always thought that he was the product of his experiences and his memories. Suppose he didn't actually have any – suppose, in fact, he had someone else's. Or someone else's ideas of his own. Would he still be himself? Or someone completely different?

Playing for time, he said,

"Course heading?"

"Still as plotted, Captain," Spock said, promptly. "ETA forty eight point three five standard days."

Something about his train of thought prompted another mental picture. _Would he still be himself? Or someone completely different?_ Green skin, a girl dancing.

"Spock. Do you remember Elba Two?"

"Certainly. The _Enterprise _made standard orbit there on stardate 5718.3, with a delivery of new medication for the treatment of the criminally insane. Our mission was ultimately successful."

"On occasion, Mr Spock, you display an impressive economy of language," he said drily. Garth of Izar, a deranged grin, Daniel Cory in the cells, the ultrasonic wave torture, the cruel and mindless explosion which wiped out Marta on the unhospitable surface of a pitiless mad planet. He brought himself back to the present, eyed his First Officer, who had survived a lot worse in the intervening time, and smiled slightly.

"Do you remember discussing Garth en route to Elba Two?"

"Indeed. You provided an enthusiastic commentary of significant length on his victory at Axanar, amongst other things. You referred to details of his life with which I had not previously been familiar."

"True," Kirk said, interested. "Does that mean your knowledge of Garth depends, now, on secondary learning from me on the _Enterprise _at the start of that particular mission? That the re-training on Mount Seleya involved teaching you what I had told you?"

"No, Captain."

"Oh?" Kirk was surprised. No point in letting his own feelings about Gol stop him from pushing Spock, from understanding better what exactly had happened on Mount Seleya. If Spock had memories other than those taught to him after the refusion, Kirk needed to be clear about that now. "So what have I got wrong?"

"My understanding of the events at Axanar and the military tactics deployed by Captain Garth derives in large part from a study I independently undertook after the events on Elba Two, Captain."

Mind focused on his own tactics, on the best strategy to deploy in relation to their joint memories of the Elba Two mission, Kirk was entirely disconcerted. "_After _Elba Two? I never knew you did that. You didn't tell me. Care to say why, Spock?"

There was a slight pause and Kirk looked up, enquiring, to see Spock clearly considering the reason for a number of evenings, now long passed, spent at the library computer in his quarters on the _Enterprise. _It was clearly important for Kirk to understand the rationale for his actions, and Spock, who was able quite clearly to remember one particularly long evening absorbing a number of scholarly texts on the subject of "_Garth: The foundation of military tactics in the space age", _found himself uncertain both of what Kirk was asking for and what he, Spock, should say. Was the memory accurate? He could think of no reason to doubt it. He remembered learning about Garth's upbringing, the early loss of his father, Garth's youthful innovations in the _avant-garde_ development of military partnerships with alien civilisations, but knew that Kirk's question was nothing to do with these details and more about the reason for their very clear recording in Spock's memory. Why had Spock become so absorbed in Garth's childhood and, above all, in the former commander's interest in alien life forms? And what, truly, was Kirk asking him now?

He looked at his captain and reached out, less methodically than usual, for a reply.

"Sir, you told that he was required reading at the Academy."

"Yes," Kirk said, not really understanding, "but by that token, you would have learned about him then. Not afterwards, on the _Enterprise, _after Elba Two. What made you look him up? We would have had some time, I guess, en route to the next mission, you were entitled, of course, but why – was it curiosity, after what happened, after meeting him?"

Because if it was, Kirk thought, there might be some mileage in asking Spock whether curiosity was an emotion, whether Vulcans were allowed to exhibit random interest in the histories of people they met around the galaxy.

But Spock had found the answer. He was unsure of its significance, he was unsure what to do with the memory, lying there quite clearly, somewhere between Axanar and the memory of Garth morphing into a facsimile of Kirk on the colony, but he knew, all the same, that it was the answer and in the spirit of the exercise being undertaken between them, he offered it to Kirk.

"In fact, you also gave some indication of the more immediately subjective significance of Captain Garth in terms of your own perspective, Captain."

He must be getting old. He still didn't understand. What was Spock trying to say? Only one way to find out.

"I'm sorry, Spock, you'll have to do better than that. Firstly, I only speak Standard, and secondly, no one has recently re-taught me my life's memories. What exactly did I say?"

And was completely unprepared for the reply.

"You said, sir, that he had been your hero."

The two stared at each other. Kirk recovered swiftly, said casually, "Quite right," and turned to pretend to check some readings on the console. He knew he was passing up on a highly promising opportunity, knew that his self-imposed mission demanded that he follow up the comment, probe Spock about the connection between that throwaway personal aside on the way into the asylum (oh yes, he remembered saying it, that slight feeling of exposure which came with letting down his guard, even in front of Spock) and the Vulcan reading up on Axanar, on a reputation for military strategy renowned the galaxy over and the road to Antos Four. But he couldn't bring himself to do it.

He felt as though he'd been given a present from the past, as though Spock, his old, undamaged companion, had reached out from light years away and from half a lifetime ago to give him a piece of their life together he'd never known about at the time. He had told Spock that Garth had been his hero and this, apparently, had been sufficient for the Vulcan to go and study the man who had inspired Kirk, sent him out to space in the first place, been a role model for the person whom Spock himself had chosen to follow. What makes a Vulcan decide to study the life of a Starfleet legend, just because a clue is given that the legend in question holds a key to the emotional dynamic which is his own captain?

Kirk had a nasty feeling that if he pressed Spock now, he would be told that studying the career of a former Starfleet officer who had been influential in the progression of his own commanding officer was a logical step for any dutiful First Officer. Even if there were, instead, a chance for real progress, he preferred to keep the gift he'd just received, untarnished. What were the chances he might actually, some day, get Spock to admit what he'd just said?

He shook himself, slightly, and got back on track.

"Do you remember talking to Garth, at the asylum, about the ethos of the Federation? About the difference between military command and peaceful scientific exploration?"

"Indeed." Spock sounded as though he were on safer ground. _Just wait, _thought Kirk, and then regretted the silent taunt, though not entirely. It was, after all, only an exaggerated version of the game he'd been playing with Spock ever since they'd first met. He felt better, suddenly. "Due to his illness, Captain Garth expressed difficulties in understanding the evolution undertaken by Starfleet into its current governance and objectives."

"That's right." He took a breath, saw Spock's posture alter suddenly, knew that he'd realised what was coming. "I talked about the dream of the early 'Fleet pioneers. I said that dream made you and me brothers – that was the word I used. Garth challenged you on it and you agreed."

"My observation at the time was that you spoke figuratively and with undue emotion."

Kirk laughed.

"Nothing new there, Commander. You always think I speak figuratively and with undue emotion. But you didn't say that I was wrong. In fact, you agreed with me. I remember you doing so."

"Captain – I am unsure of the purpose of this conversation. You spoke to Captain Garth of the common purpose which had motivated each of us in service, and I agreed."

"More to it than that, Spock. In fact, so far as I can remember, Garth told you off – he said you were just my subordinate officer, that there was no place for speaking of a bond beyond that. You're not going to tell me otherwise. Are you?"

Spock said, mildly,

"In that exchange, Captain Garth also offered me the command of a starship in his own fleet – a fleet, naturally, which had no foundation in reality. As you are aware, he was at the time detained under legislation for the protection of the criminally insane. Are his words relevant to any continuing dynamic or conversation, Captain?"

Hazel eyes met dark opaqueness. The window which had opened up with the unprecedented singularity of _You said that he had been your hero_ was closed tight shut. Fair enough, Spock. Time for a strategic retreat, perhaps, in order for an advance, another day. Forty-eight point three five standard days left, after all. He wasn't quite ready to let Spock off the hook for the day, though. If he were going to surrender on the question of whether the two of them were brothers, there would be a trade-off or he would go down fighting. Something less edgy. He smiled to himself.

"I've got some reading to do on Marillus, Commander, so I'll give you a rest for a bit. Just one more question, though, before that. Sigma Iotia Two."

"Stardate 4598.0," Spock said, promptly, as if relieved to be on safer ground. "A society contaminated by premature contact with the _USS Horizon."_

"Do you remember Bela Oxmys, Jojo Krako?"

"I do."

"Of course. So you remember going to see Jojo Krako with me?"

"You utilised an antique vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine."

"I did, indeed," Kirk sat back, satisfied. He had got where he wanted to be. "And you hated it. You hated it and you laughed at me."

Spock lifted an eyebrow.

"That is an unduly emotive description, if you will allow, sir. I admit to having described your handling of the vehicle in critical terms. It did appear, at the time, that you were less than expert. However, given the development of modern transport systems and the nature of your own career – indeed, given your prowess as a pilot before you entered command stream – there is no ignominy in this."

"No doubt," Kirk's smile broadened. "That's not really the point, though, is it?"

"Sir?"

"Mr Spock, I have known you face with equanimity a range of alien beings whose physical powers, general appearance and aggressive hostility would have shattered the courage of lesser men. I have seen you overpowered by force, badly hurt and fighting to the last breath. I have also," he swallowed, but kept going, "forgive me, viewed a recording of you walking fearlessly into the reactor room in the engineering room of the _Enterprise _in order to restore the mains engine manually because annihilation imminently threatened the ship and the crew and you saw no other solution but to expose yourself selflessly to an appallingly painful, lonely death."

Spock gazed back at him, one eyebrow slightly raised, neither admitting nor challenging the accolades, waiting for what was coming.

"So – what was so damn scary about my driving, then?"

"I did not and have not described it in those terms, sir."

"No? I think, if I remember, that I asked you if you were afraid of cars and you said no, that it was my driving which alarmed you."

"I believe I indicated that walking would have been preferable. That was an eminently logical suggestion, Captain."

"Perhaps, if you ignore issues of speed and if you're prepared to admit to being a nervous passenger. But that's not really the point, is it? The point is that you were enjoying telling me that I could do with some driving tuition."

Spock gave him a level look.

"Sir –"

"I think I can tell you exactly what you said," Kirk said. For the first time in the conversation, he was sure of himself, relaxed in the memory. It occurred to him, then, that it was the equivalent of Spock's confession about Garth. Before Genesis, Spock had never told him that he had spent hours studying Garth, just because Garth had been Kirk's hero. Perhaps it wasn't too late to construct a future out of the past. Because, before Genesis, he had never told Spock how much he had treasured that exchange in a cream-coloured sedan car on a bullet-sprayed street in Sigma Iotia Two. "You said I was an excellent starship commander but as a taxi driver I left much to be desired."

He looked at Spock and smiled again, quietly.

"Mr Spock, we obey our commanding officers and where appropriate we may even adopt certain cultural and linguistic mores. Would you accept that commenting on my potential as a taxi driver falls into neither behavioural category?" He lifted a hand. "Don't answer the question. It's not fair and I don't need an answer. I just need you to know that I know. And I want to tell you that it's a good memory. One of my best. I'm glad you still have it, whatever it means to you, and that I got to tell you. That's all."

He bent to the monitor in front of him and punched up the report he had been looking for on the Romulan contact. After a while, however, he stole another look at Spock. The Vulcan was studying the readings from the console but he looked up and caught Kirk's glance and then looked down again. He hadn't commented on the Sigma Iotia Two memory, had neither agreed nor disagreed, but it didn't take someone who had shared command with Spock over several galaxies and countless crises to know that the course heading would not be demanding the Vulcan's full attention. If Spock had been given cause to think, that could only be a good thing. Kirk considered the gains of the day and was just about to chalk it up as a win (Delta Vega had been a resounding defeat but Sigma Iotia Two had been an advance and Elba Two better than a draw) when, almost as though he could hear the human's thoughts (_could he? _Kirk wondered) Spock's head came up again.

"Sir, I appreciate the intent behind these discussions and am fully prepared to continue, it being of clear benefit to me and apparently a welcome use of time from your own perspective. I do have two conditions, though."

"Proceed," Kirk said, curiously.

"Firstly, if this is making you uncomfortable in any way, I am content that the conversation should cease."

"That works both ways, Commander. What was your other point?"

"I suggested before Dr McCoy came on board that the exercise of revisiting former episodes might assist each of us in understanding the other better. I hope that you are retaining this as an objective and not seeing an opportunity only to assist me in re-engaging with my own memories."

"Would you care to be specific, Spock?"

Spock looked at him squarely.

"I believe that your own attitude to diversity tends to allow you too easily to impute human reactions to those from alien cultures, Captain. You are my commanding officer and it would be illogical not to benefit from your experience of me to understand better my own former interactions and development. However, your perspective is likely to be coloured by your own cultural norms. You might like to consider viewing the adoption of common cultural and linguistic mores as a positive, without prejudicing the integrity of either person's heritage. That would seem to me a legitimate and appropriate objective."

_You may help me to be Spock, but I will still be Vulcan. Don't assume you can unpick the past and wash the green blood out of every memory._

_If I learn, you learn._

A hundred objections rose to Kirk's lips and, because justice demanded he accepted Spock's point, he quieted them.

"You have a deal, Commander. I'm going to wake McCoy."


	3. Chapter 3

"How about we play 'Twenty Questions'?" McCoy suggested. He sat sideways to the main viewer, studying Spock as the Vulcan checked readings on the console and ran some calculations on the course headings.

"Doctor, it is traditional to ask questions, not to play them."

Well, he could have scripted that reply.

"Noughts and crosses? Strip poker? Look, Spock, I realise it's a safe bet none of these figured very highly on the curriculum in terms of that brain-washing you went through back on Vulcan, but let it not be said that your homeland did more for you that your shipmates did in your hour of need. I'm willing and able to teach you the rules of strip poker right now, before Jim wakes up. You'll never get a better offer."

It was clear from Spock's silence that some part of his re-education had at least provided the Vulcan with an awareness of the broad principles of strip poker. McCoy invested a brief amount of time in a form of bemused joy at the mental conjuring of the process which would have involved the transmission of that knowledge by the acolytes of Gol. He watched for a few minutes more as Spock almost visibly ignored him, and then shrugged.

"OK, you win. No strip poker. C'mon, Spock. Talk to me. Is it helping, what you and Jim are working through together?"

His companion turned and McCoy held himself in check not to betray a movement of surprise. He had been expecting his overture to be courteously ignored, as had almost every advance since Spock turned back from following his father on the dusty road from Mount Seleya. Since _Your name is Jim _and a reclaiming of his place among the crew of the _Enterprise_ which had yet to yield any real sort of dialogue with any of them, perhaps least of all with the ship's CMO. McCoy's own view was that Spock might struggle to come to terms with the particular service the doctor had involuntarily rendered him; that there might even be some sort of resonance with regard to the former keeper of his _katra. Damn fool culture, _McCoy reasoned to himself, _any rational modern civilisation is content with a simple medical transplant. _But even to himself, his habitual mockery sounded hollow.

Spock's expression, however, on this occasion, was neither blank nor dismissive. McCoy lacked Kirk's expertise on the Vulcan's features, but he knew enough to recognise that Spock looked troubled. _Troubled _was good, McCoy reasoned. He figured the Vulcan had plenty to be troubled about. _Troubled _would be, to coin a phrase, a logical reaction. He waited.

But nothing happened. Spock's face cleared and he said,

"Excuse me, doctor. I must take a reading from the cloaking control," and McCoy was alone, the Vulcan's back turned to him at the rear of the main cabin and only the emptiness of space in the main viewer.

* * *

Not being prepared to discuss with McCoy the reason for being troubled meant neither that Spock was untroubled nor that he was unaware that he was troubled. It simply meant that he was not prepared to discuss the matter with McCoy.

The day after the events in the Council Chamber, with Kirk restored to command and Spock (without the slightest questioning from anyone) apparently about to accompany him, to follow his captain again back to the bridge of his ship and across the stars, clad in science officer blues, he who had been awarded his own promotion after the encounter with V'Ger – Spock had received a courteous but firm request to attend an appointment with the chief of the Starfleet medical directorate. He presented himself punctiliously, understanding with complete clarity that official procedures required senior 'Fleet personnel who had suffered extremely public and widely advertised deaths from radiation burns to establish their identity to the satisfaction of independent professional analysis before resuming service as if nothing had happened. The medical examination was hampered by the obvious embarrassment of a consultant psychiatrist who (along with the rest of the inhabitants of Earth) owed his life to his patient, entirely accepted (Holmes-like, in the absence of any probable alternative) that Spock was who he professed to be and yet struggled with the bare concept of the _katra_, let alone the idea that Spock possessed one and that it had survived Genesis and been reunited with the rest of him by a team of Surak's devotees half way up a mountain in Vulcan.

The psych had dealt with the interview by over-engaging in the formalities of the process. The professional detachment had slipped only once. He had elicited from Spock a description of the events in the _Enterprise _engineering room, having first studied the digital recording and familiarised himself with the precise history of what had befallen the Vulcan, in order to test the verisimilitude of Spock's memory and his particular perspective of the occasion. Understanding, quite suddenly and with a kind of compassionate horror, that the person in front of him retained a vivid memory not only of the excruciating pain he had endured but of the very moment of death, of the loss of companionship and of sensation, he asked,

"Does it haunt you? Do you have nightmares?"

And was met, inevitably, with Spock's customary rebuttal,

"Vulcans do not dream."

Kirk, had he been present, and had he been for whatever reason willing to enlighten the physician at the expense of Spock's privacy, might have explained to him that the phrase "Vulcans do not –" had an almost infinite range of application and, at the same time, an almost infinite variety of accuracy. Among Kirk's personal collection, for example, Spock's once and future captain accepted "Vulcans do not eat meat", "Vulcans do not speculate" and "Vulcans do not kill without necessity", had absolutely no respect for "Vulcans do not feel" and was rather unconvinced by "Vulcans do not lie".

The truth was often that some Vulcans did and some Vulcans didn't, and Kirk was in a position to know that Spock was often in the minority camp, whatever the function in question.

In this instance, Kirk might have suggested that Spock would have been ashamed of dreaming in general, as an essentially human and emotional pastime in which the followers of T'Lar would have taught him quite firmly he did not indulge. And he might have been ashamed of dreaming of Genesis in particular, because it was a source of horror and pain and fear and despair, and he would have been as likely to admit to it as he would have been to have declared an acquired taste for swimming the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay, with or without a pair of hump-backed whales in tow.

Had Kirk furnished the psychologist with these observations, the consultant would have gained a perspective on Spock which he was, in fact, denied, despite the fact that he certified him (after what he would later describe to his partner as the most unique sixty minute cross-examination and psychometric evaluation of his career) to be both Spock and to be fit for duty. And none of this would have changed the fact that Kirk's assumptions about Spock and his dreams of Genesis were, in fact, correct.

Vulcans do not dream. Half Vulcans may dream, although in fact Spock rarely encountered the phenomenon. Once, as a small child, he had made the mistake of describing to Sarek a particularly vivid nocturnal imagining. It was not a mistake he made twice, and he had after that begun both consciously and sub-consciously to suppress the instinct, with a success rate he would have estimated at 96.8%. Since Genesis, however, he had fallen repeatedly prey to his baser 3.2%.

He found that meditation provided some level of support against the nightly return to the engine room of his old ship. The disciplines of Gol were still accessible to him, and thirty minutes in a light trance before he slept ensured, after a few nights spent summoning the resource, that although he might still find himself blind and burning, ashamed of seeking the comfort of a human touch denied him, he knew it, even as he experienced it, to be a memory, knew his own self to be a ghost and not a present reality.

What troubled him more, what had passed briefly over his features before he rearranged them in front of McCoy's inquisitive eyes, was something slightly different. His moment of waking, ever since the Council Chamber and particularly since boarding the _Polaris, _had been a sensation of hidden colour. Schooled as his mind had been not to dream, Spock had accustomed himself, over the years, to focus his sleeping thoughts on abstract design, generally binary patterns of black and white. This had been the décor of his mind's repose, just as human custom was to decorate the nursery of a new born child. Yet what he saw now, as consciousness returned at the precise hour dictated, was a hidden colour. He could describe it to himself in no other terms, despite knowing the concept to be illogical. It was an awareness of an actual sensation neither black nor white but some vivid shade, and yet it was not apparent to him but veiled, just out of sight.

It seemed to him that Kirk might be able to help him understand the phenomenon, but he was not at all sure that he wanted to ask him. Spock's memories of the burning pain of the engine room were very graphic and the binary patterns of his chosen dreams were cool and comforting. The brightly distracting alternative might not be the same pain as the engine room, but the colours were sharp and promised Spock nothing of peace.

On the other hand, Kirk had said, _You have a deal, Commander._

And because of that, when McCoy eventually tired of scowling at Spock's back and disappeared towards the sleeping quarters with a pointed yawn, and when Kirk appeared; when Kirk, in a manner Spock recognised as being utterly characteristic without quite understanding how he knew that, had retrieved from Spock within approximately twenty two seconds precisely the critical data necessary to ensure he was appraised of the situation, and when the muscles in Kirk's shoulders had, in a gesture Spock also knew was innate to his captain, both relaxed and tensed as if to say _No immediate threat to my ship _but also _I have the con – _at this point, Spock looked directly at his captain and said, in the manner of an invitation,

"Sir, may I ask you about the events following our unsuccessful mission to Cestus Three?"

He saw, quite clearly in Kirk's face, surprised pleasure that Spock had initiated the conversation, followed by an unfocused look of inner searching as Kirk pursued the memory.

"Stardate 3045.6," Spock furnished, helpfully.

"Cestus Three? Cestus – I remember now. That was Johnny Travers' outpost – it was destroyed by the Gorn before we got there. God, yes, the Metrons, that asteroid. Gunpowder!" He brooded a little, inwardly, for a minute, on a frustrating memory, and then looked up, clear-eyed.

"Yes, Cestus Three. What about it, Commander?"

Spock spoke very carefully.

"Captain, you pursued the Gorn vessel from Cestus Three with every intention of destroying it. Indeed, given the speed at which you did so, you risked damaging the _Enterprise _by your actions, which speaks to an aggression and an instinct for violent revenge entirely foreign to the teachings on my planet."

Kirk's eyes narrowed.

"Your point being, Mr Spock? I rather think we had this conversation at the time."

Spock said, levelly, "I am attempting, in response to your invitation, to analyse the command dynamic in terms of the apparent differences between us of culture and ethos, Captain."

Kirk stared. _I don't understand our friendship, given your tendency to aggression. _Had Spock really just said that?

His optimism from the previous day rapidly evaporating, Kirk thought _Forty eight days _and then _Forty seven, now _and then _What if it's not enough? _Forty seven days, at this rate, might get him somewhere near the first time he had beaten Spock at chess and Spock had been a nanosecond too late to conceal surprise and chagrin. Which had been weeks before Delta Vega. Before _You play an irritating game of chess. _Before everything which had followed.

He wasn't ready to give up, though. Not yet. He said,

"You had a ringside seat during my encounter with the Gorn, Spock."

Spock inclined his head. "The critical developments on the asteroid were relayed by the Metrons to the main viewer of the _Enterprise, _using technology still not available to Starfleet."

"McCoy told me afterwards you provided a running commentary on my efforts."

An eyebrow went up, somewhat rapidly, and Kirk said, feeling his way,

"You figured it out before I did. Potassium nitrate, sulphur, diamonds. You saw it as soon as it was shown on the viewer. McCoy told me."

Spock regarded him equably with an expression Kirk would once have called smug. He would still call it smug; however, Spock was mistaken if he thought Kirk was trying to placate him through flattery. He grinned to himself and said,

"McCoy said you were cheering me on." Spock opened his mouth to object, and Kirk continued, swiftly, "OK, he said you were providing remote encouragement."

"It was naturally my preference that you should be successful in overcoming your adversary."

"With gunpowder? Against an unarmed opponent? Whom you had correctly (as it turned out) suggested might not have been the predator I thought?"

"Captain – "

"When it comes down to it, you would rather I kill than be killed."

"Captain. If it gives you satisfaction for me to admit that your life is of value to me, I have no difficulty in doing so. You are mistaken if you believe otherwise." Their eyes met and held, and something passed between the two men, perhaps a small thing, of no obvious consequence. To Kirk, it was the gossamer thread of a small mooring. He held on to his end of the rope, and waited.

"That has little relevance to the point on which I was inviting discussion. Captain, a review of our acquaintance reveals a tendency on your part to aggression rather more easy and natural than is readily understood within a close working partnership between us, given my own beliefs and cultural heritage."

"And yet I've known you fight, known you hurt, known you kill, Spock. We do it, all of us, in the service. There is no other way. I know – I know it was what kept Sarek from acknowledging you all those years. Because it was your choice, too, in leaving Vulcan."

Something came into Spock's eyes, and he bowed his head and then lifted it again.

"Understand, Captain, I am not making any accusation." _Could have fooled me, _thought Kirk, wryly, but he was quiet, listening. Somewhere, on some level, he and Spock were really talking to each other. He only wished he knew what they were saying.

"There is a difference, nonetheless," Spock was continuing. He paused, and then said, "When you and I in the past have encountered difficulties in understanding each other, it seems to me that you have resorted to violence."

Kirk's turn to raise his eyebrows sharply, in outrage. Before he could speak, Spock pressed on.

"I refer you to the events at Psi 2000 and Omicron Ceti Three."

A moment, while Kirk identified the reference and was back in the transporter room, brandishing an iron bar, the idiotic smile on Spock's face turning by degrees to uncomprehending stony hurt, then, finally, anger. _You mutinous, disloyal, computerised, half-breed… What makes you think you're a man?_

"Spock…. All these years later, and you still need me to tell me how hard that was for me?"

"I am merely commenting on your choice of tactics, Captain."

"I had no choice."

"That is my point, sir."

Kirk blinked.

"To coin one of your own phrases, elucidate, Mr Spock."

"In your position, I would have adopted other means. Any Vulcan would have done so."

Well, perhaps. Kirk tried, and failed, to imagine Sarek calling Spock an elf with a hyperactive thyroid.

"What would you have done?"

"I might have employed particular mental techniques which would have enabled me to have communicated with you even in an altered state. For example, the Vulcan practice of _tal-mayin, _which –"

"Spock, please. As I said, I had no choice. I apologise for not spelling out that I would, of course, have had a choice had I been adept at _tal_-whatever. I'm a flawed human being, Spock. I'm not a Vulcan."

"As I said, sir, that is my point."

Kirk's head jerked back.

"Are you saying that you're questioning our friendship simply because you are Vulcan and I am human?"

Spock was silent.

"Spock," and Kirk quietened his impatience, willed his tone to gentleness, "Spock, our differences make us stronger. I listened to you, after we left Cestus Three. You know I did. I had the knife in my hand on that asteroid, after the explosion, and I couldn't kill the Gorn, because of you. I threw away the damn knife and I let him go because you had made me think there might be another way, that I might be missing something."

He met Spock's eyes, and something in them made him grasp the mooring rope again, a little more securely. In Spock, the moment translated itself into a single reflection – he had not known, at the time, that this was why Kirk had spared the Gorn. He held the thought, held the memory, and then Kirk was continuing,

"I'd like to think that, in return, that knowing me has changed you. That's what friendship means, Spock. We help each other to grow, all of us."

That was when he remembered again the sharp, painful colours of his non-dream. Why was it that when he tried to do what Kirk wanted, tried to unravel the question of Kirk's meaning in his life, the memories were of pain? On Omicron Ceti Three, he had grasped the opportunity of tranquillity, and Kirk had blown it sky-high with a call to an allegiance laced with distress and spiked with anger.

Of course, there had been other times. Spock remembered the serene austerity of Gol – Gol where there had been complete refuge from the hand grenades of human conflict. Kirk, still holding on to his mooring rope, almost caught the look of white robes in his eyes and both men, not quite knowing that the thought had crossed between them, shied away from Mount Seleya. _Not yet, _thought Kirk, _not now. _Where was Spock, really? Had he heard any of what Kirk had said?

In fact Spock, letting go of Omicron Ceti Three, was remembering his last words to Leila Kalomi. Kirk had not been present and this was his memory, not the captain's. He had told her he had a responsibility to _that man on the bridge_ and he had talked of self-made purgatories. He turned, as if to escape the memory of his own words, and because that would have been illogical, he converted the movement into an inspection of the power readings, and Kirk let him go, knowing they had both had enough.


	4. Chapter 4

"You've got exactly ten minutes left to talk to me properly," McCoy said. Kirk looked up, taken aback and then laughed. One of the advantages of a sleeping rota involving a Vulcan was that you could be sure to the minute exactly when he was going to emerge from his sleeping quarters. In the case of a human, you might be inclined to lower your voice for the last half hour of the shift, in order not to disturb a waking dream or not to be over-heard if the subject of the conversation were the sleeper in question. In the case of Spock, you could put serious money on him sleeping up until the point he decided to wake up.

A combination of loyalty and irritation had decided Kirk not to spend the shift with McCoy discussing Spock behind his back. He felt the stirrings of a long allegiance to the Vulcan (empirical memory or not) which inhibited any such undertaking, and in any event, he was fairly sure the conversation would fail to soothe. He had determinedly steered the conversation towards McCoy's family and to the lives of mutual friends, both among the _Enterprise _crew and elsewhere. McCoy had seemed happy enough to follow the cues and Kirk had himself relaxed and enjoyed the banter and gossip. Just as he glanced at the chronometer, though, and mentally braced himself for the Vulcan's entrance, McCoy's comment cut across the space between them like whiplash, and it became apparent he'd been biding his time.

"Spock will be up in a minute," he said, playing for time but not bothering to pretend he didn't know what McCoy was talking about.

McCoy didn't bother to acknowledge the comment.

"Woke up half way through the last shift. Heard you talking about Omicron Ceti Three. What the devil brought that up? Talk about old wounds. You couldn't have come up with something easier? Like radiation poisoning, or being rejected by his father? Why the hell pick Leila Kalomi?"

Kirk was taken aback.

"You think she was that big a deal to Spock?"

The doctor was silent for a minute. Then he said, in a tone so serious it belied the meaning of his words, so that Kirk almost did a double take,

"You know I talk up a storm about Romulan ale, Jim, but I'm a Georgian boy at heart and where I come from, we like mint julep. My Uncle Jack used to make the best juleps for miles around. He used to swear it was all about getting exactly the right amount of bourbon, but not my granddad – he used to say it was about picking the mint leaf so fresh it was still growing in the bourbon. Our neighbour Johnny Joe Mason, who kept the local bar, said it was neither of those things, he said you had to make sure the water was close to frozen and you had to serve the julep in a silver cup, and anything else was second rate."

Kirk stared at him. There was a small silence in the cabin, and then McCoy looked back at his captain with a small smile on his lips which entirely lacked his normal irony.

"You never got infected by the spores, did you, Jim?" And, as Kirk shook his head slightly, he went on, "Thing is, I ended up under a tree with a mint julep in my hand. That's what happened. That's mostly what I remember about Elias Sandoval's people. That incredible heat, and a drink that tasted of home, a thousand thousand miles from Georgia."

Kirk remembered his silent reflection, at the start of the mission, to the effect that McCoy was being himself and Spock was being someone else. He changed his mind. McCoy had seen that Spock had decided to be someone entirely different and clearly he thought he'd join the party. The officer in front of Kirk with a slightly sad smile on his face was no one Kirk knew very well, though it suddenly occurred to him that Natira of Yonada might have recognised him. And then he realised what McCoy was saying to him.

"You're saying that the spores brought out something inherent to you?"

"Spock called them a happiness pill, seem to remember, but one man's happiness is another man's torture. Reckon it's a highly individual thing, paradise. Didn't see Spock running for mint juleps, did you? More's the pity, would have done him the world of good. No – he wanted to fool around with Ms Kalomi in a rural idyll."

"What are you saying, Bones – that she was that important to him? I remember her being a sweet girl, but – Spock? I don't think so."

"Jim, when we left orbit, when it was all over, do you remember what he said? Because I do. He said that for the first time in his life, he'd been happy."

Yes, he remembered that. It had bothered him at the time, and he'd tucked it away to worry over it, but Spock had seemed normal enough, over chess, the next couple of days and then they'd got the call to go to Janus Vl, and he'd never called the Vulcan on it. That's what happened, on a starship, it wasn't that you didn't care but that you had conversations scheduled and then life got in the way – life, the Klingons, the Romulans – or, in that particular case, an overgrown, hyperactive, egg-laying armchair on a diet of underground boulders. But then, he reflected, Spock had never told him that he'd gone off and read up on Garth, and he'd never told Spock that stalling a sedan car on Sigma Iotia ll, for all that it lacked efficacy in comparison with any other single form of transport he'd ever used, was one of his fondest memories. Sometimes, you got the chance to have a conversation second-time round, half a lifetime later.

Kirk brought himself back to the present.

He wondered now what that conversation might have looked like. What was it he had been going to say to Spock? Why had it bothered him?

He said, slowly,

"It might have been the first time in his life that he was happy. But I think I took it, at the time, as being more about _happy _than about Ms Kalomi. That it said more about him than about her."

"For what it's worth, I agree," McCoy said, his gaze mild. "That's what I meant, Jim, by different people's paradise. I wanted to be home, with my mint julep. But Spock didn't want anything to do with home, seems to me. He wanted a loving relationship, and peace and quiet, and maybe a sense of belonging, of belonging to someone. Seems to me, what he wanted was a long way from Mount Seleya and that was what he meant by it being for the first time in his life."

There was a beat of silence between them, and then Kirk said, more brusquely than he had intended,

"But it wasn't real, Bones. I had to bring him out of it – had to bring all of us out of it. We weren't there to drink mint juleps or make love al fresco. We were there to do a job."

"Not saying it wasn't the right thing to do. You sure, though, that was all that was going on?"

"What are you trying to say, Bones?"

McCoy shrugged.

"Look, I saw the damage, Jim. We all did, once we beamed back up. Looked to me like something very big and nasty with an appetite for bulkheads had been having a picnic in the transporter room."

Kirk grinned, reluctantly. "Vulcan muscle, I'm afraid, not human. I'm not in that league."

"But it was your fight, Jim – you provoked him, you made him go for you. I can't think what it must have taken – hard enough to get a rise out of him at the best of times, let alone when he's spaced out and spore-happy."

Kirk frowned, discomfited.

"I'm not especially proud of what I did, and I said as much to Spock, just now. But the end justified the means, in this instance – look, what _is _this, Bones? This is ancient history."

"My point is, Captain, that you weren't just doing what you could do to get the mission back on track and your crew on the ship. You were blazing mad at Spock."

"Me?"

"You felt betrayed." Their eyes met; Kirk's hazel gaze narrowed. "Go on, admit it."

"I'm admitting nothing. What's your point, doctor?"

"What's my point? My point is that you couldn't get a piece of paper between you and Spock, those days. The man was at your shoulder, backing up your orders, standing next to you on the bridge or fighting by your side and when that wasn't going on, you were beating him at chess. Suddenly, he stops obeying orders, stages a mutiny and is having a wonderful time without a thought for you or your ship. Telling me you weren't furious? Hurt? I think some of that stuff you came out with in the transporter room came from an angry place, Jim, if you really want to know what I think. I think that fight was as much a release for you, from that, as it was for Spock to get rid of the spores."

_We'll see about you deserting my ship, _he had snarled. He opened his mouth to object, and closed it. McCoy was right. He had been livid with Spock. Even all these years later, he remembered it, like the touch of heat.

McCoy was watching him closely. Following up on his win, he said, with the air of one nearing the home stretch, eyes on the finishing line, "And it's just the same now, isn't it?"

Kirk frowned.

"I'm not angry with Spock. I'm trying to help him."

"You're trying to get him to compromise, Jim, and he doesn't like compromise."

"What do you mean, compromise?"

"Well, this is how I see it. He's half human, half Vulcan. That's a hard divide to bridge. 'Course, you know Vulcans are mad as hatters, from an Earth perspective - any normal human being would refer them to psychiatric treatment within ten minutes of meeting one. Must be like being half elephant, half chimpanzee, when you think about it. Completely incompatible." Kirk wondered which was Vulcan of the elephant and the chimp, but decided not to ask. "I guess you have to hand it to Spock. His way of dealing with it is logical after a fashion (and God help him, the man would think that was a compliment). His solution is to go one way or the other – Ms Kalomi, who meant he could forget about his Vulcan half, or Gol, where he could forget about being human. You? You're the one he'll follow into hellfire, and you keep dragging him out of those simple, easy places. You keep telling him he has to learn to compromise, he has to live in the middle, learn to be half-and-half. And when he beats a retreat from that, to Gol or to Omicron Ceti Three, it makes you hopping mad."

Kirk stared back at his friend and the accusation lay between them. After a beat, he said, softly,

"And if that were all true, you'd agree with me. You'd want him to be himself, to be the best of both worlds, the way I do."

McCoy shrugged, lightly, and gave a half smile.

"Just wanted you to admit it, Jim. 'Cause that's what's going on here."

"Meaning you don't think Spock needs help?"

"Help? More than you're qualified to give, Captain, and possibly you're not the best person to do it. Put it this way. From what I understand, you got a face full of spores, just the same as we all did. But it didn't work on you. Given a choice between paradise and the_ Enterprise, _the two of you made different choices. Which is funny, really. Wonder if you've ever thought that one through. Bet you haven't." And looked round as there was a movement from the sleeping quarters. "Time's up. Just as well. You can be quite tiring company, you know that?"

Kirk opened his mouth to protest, and then shut it thoughtfully.

* * *

Spock finished sending an encrypted report to HQ and confirmed to Kirk that he had done so. His companion nodded, but said nothing, which had been a pattern for the duration of their shift together. Spock watched him for a while, and then said,

"Captain, for the past three days you have engaged me in a review of past incidents in order to explore the nature and perspective of my memory. Today you do not seem to be so inclined and something is pre-occupying you."

Kirk gave him a half-smile which belied a greater satisfaction. He wondered if he had the answer to part of his question - _once you took away memory, and then you taught a person what had happened to them… who were you, really?_ He was on a mission to retrieve his friendship with Spock, to get the Vulcan to acknowledge the personal perspective of the history between them, but that was not the same as whether Spock was, in fact, Spock. This was not the Spock of the Gol years, the start of the VGer mission. That Spock would never have reached out to him, have said, as this one just had, _Is something wrong? _And that, Kirk reminded himself, given the devastation of the reactor room and of _Don't grieve, Admiral _was a gift beyond all expectation.

It wasn't the same as having his friend back. But it was a start.

"I was thinking of Sevrin's people," he confessed. "Do you remember, Spock? That boy, Adam. And Chekov's Irina. Searching for Eden."

"Stardate 5832.3, the crew of the Aurora," Spock confirmed. "What is the present relevance of that particular episode, Captain?"

"Another paradise, that's all. I remember at the time you were the one who sympathised with their quest, understood what drove them. You on a quest of your own, Spock?" It was said lightly, but with the faintest hint of a challenge.

"My recollection of events at that time were that you were troubled by my association with the group of young people," Spock said. His eyes met Kirk's and Kirk's reaction was immediate.

"Is that what they taught you, T'lar's people? They taught you that I found it difficult? _Do you remember_?"

Spock's expression tuned inwardly, and he said, as if reaching for the answer,

"Your reaction to the dynamic with Sevrin's followers permeates my memory of that episode, Captain, just as Sevrin's irrationality does, and the loyalty of his group. The outward manifestation of the emotions of all those with whom I have associated in the past forms part of my recollections. That is inevitable and logical and not refuted. Vulcans, on the other hand –"

"- have no emotions," Kirk finished. "We'll take that one as read, shall we?" All the same, he felt encouraged, once more. There seemed to be some sort of barrier between Spock and access to his own historic emotions, but the nearer he came to understanding the emotions of others, surely it would help him to reach his own. And, judging by his confession about Garth, the barrier was not impermeable. He said, curiously,

"So, tell me about me being troubled."

Spock's eyes met his again, with the clarity of a simple truth that does not perceive a need to dissemble.

"You did not value the actions or motivations of Sevrin's followers and you were challenged by the fact that I found it comparatively straightforward to communicate with a sect who opposed your way of life and whom you openly despised."

He was taken aback, completely, and then his sense of humour re-established itself and his mouth twitched.

"Well, I'm glad that you've been able to reclaim your conversational style, Mr Spock. It's always been of great value to me to know that I have a First Officer who can be relied upon to give an honest evaluation of any given situation, without fear of offence."

"Do I assume from that comment that I have caused offence? I intended only to answer your question."

"You're right," Kirk said, ignoring the question Spock had asked and answering the one he hadn't voiced, "I found it difficult to like them and I didn't understand why it was so easy for you. You of all people. I didn't like them because they seemed so – I don't know, so immature, so irresponsible. So emotionally self-indulgent. And I expected you to feel the same way because you are the most intellectually fastidious person I know."

Spock's eyebrow rose.

"I am less easily affected by dysfunctional emotional behaviour, given that I have lower thresholds and lower expectations in that regard than you do," he said, and Kirk failed to smother the grin this time. Spock might as well have said, _You all look the same to me._ He found himself hoping that his old friend was sufficiently present to enjoy the banter, that it wasn't just Kirk, on his own, catching echoes of the person he used to know, the person who would have delivered that line deliberately. This time round, he wasn't quite sure. Spock was continuing,

"As for the intellectual approach, I do not deny that the search for what Sevrin called Eden has always been of interest to me. It is a myth which can be found in a very large number of otherwise unconnected races and cultures. The possible origins are therefore fascinating."

"Nothing more personal than that?"

He saw Spock hesitate slightly before he answered,

"A former companion of mine was obsessed by this legend and gave his life to its pursuit."

Not an answer Kirk was expecting, but nor was it where he was going, so he ignored the words and pushed past – a decision he would regret six months later. It was not the first time Spock had offered him a prescient signpost and he had taken a different turning, and it would not be the last.

"Are you looking for Eden, Spock?"

Once more, Gol hovered between them, unspoken. Spock was silent, then said,

"Sir, there are always possibilities." Kirk winced, inwardly, at the last time he himself had spoken those words, in memory of Spock. He wondered if Genesis would stop haunting him only at the point of truly regaining his old partnership with the Vulcan. "Would you not, in turn, care to admit that it is unduly restrictive to dismiss philosophies which do not accord with your own beliefs?"

Kirk was more surprised than offended.

"Is that how you see me? I think I'm more open-minded than that. I admit to not having had much sympathy with Sevrin. I think it would be unfair to draw a generalisation."

"Would you care to elucidate?"

Kirk thought back to _oh, Herbert, you are stiff – _his own response, wholly ironic at the time _I shall try to be less rigid in my thinking. _His frustration at having to leave the diplomacy to Spock, his quick grasp of Sevrin's insanity as an explanation, a way out. And then his first sight of the planet – _Is this what they believed in? That I can understand. _His vain attempt to save Sevrin from death and destruction and, finally, how he had let Chekov go to say his farewell to Irina.

"I'm happy to admit that I learned from your handling of the situation. Because you saw them differently, I tried to do so, too. I was honestly sorry for them, at the end, I mean above and beyond what happened to Adam and Sevrin – I discovered that I'd wanted them to find what they were seeking for. But it wouldn't have been for me, and I guess I found it difficult that it might have been, for you. The _Enterprise_ was what I wanted. Guess you were less rooted there than I thought."

"Captain, you are overlooking the possibility that I might have been both a committed and dedicated officer on the bridge and have the intellectual curiosity to be interested in hypothetical alternatives."

He had the sensation, then, that they were both slightly missing each other. He wasn't really answering Spock's questions and Spock wasn't really answering his. Perhaps that would be the case until he took his courage in both hands and tackled the Gol years. The conversations with McCoy and Spock had shaken him, left him seeing, for the first time, a conflicted person whose immediate needs were best served as First Officer of the _Enterprise _but who was still searching for his true calling, had done so throughout the five year mission, had looked for it in peaceful Edens and the sterile tranquillity of Gol.

But that wasn't how he remembered Spock. It was too simplistic. The essence of Spock was the conflict within him and the essence of what he had achieved, of everything that had drawn Kirk to him in the first place, was the way he had managed that conflict and its inherent contradictions. If it were true that tension is necessary for creativity, insight and perspective, Spock had carried it around with him in spades all his life, little wonder his reputation was rightly galactic.

Because, of course, there was violence in Spock, even if buried deep. He was back there, suddenly, in the unforgiving sands of the Vulcan arena, Spock's face contorted above him in the drive to kill. He shuddered, and reached for a lighter memory – Spock on Janus Vl, discovering that the Horta was right next to Kirk, forgetting instantly about the preservation of an ancient species in the interests of science _Kill it, Captain, quickly. Your life is in danger. You can't take the risk_. It had been he, Kirk, who had tempered that decision, had insisted on compassion first. He felt better, suddenly.

"Ever had a mint julep, Spock?"

"A mint julep is an alcoholic beverage, traditionally consumed in the southern states of America. Its ingredients are bourbon, sugar, water and mint and it is a particular favourite of Dr McCoy."

"I asked if you've had one."

"I have not."

"Well, assuming we get to Romulus and back in one piece, I'll treat you."

Spock lifted an inevitable eyebrow but said nothing and, tacitly, both men turned to the console and to the mission. As he bent over the readings, a memory darted in and out of Kirk's mind; he pursued it and found it – Miramanee, the obelisk, a paradise of his own. He had known the same temptation, of course, had succumbed – though in an altered state. Did that bring him and Spock closer? He thought of the logs, McCoy's description of Spock's dogged stubbornness, fifty nine sleepless days on impulse power in order to be there in time to save Kirk's life. And here he was himself, forty five days left on his way to find a missing agent and his missing friend. Had Spock studied the symbols on the obelisk as obsessively as he was reading the clues in the Vulcan's words and in his expression? Spock had said, on Mount Seleya, _You came back for me, _and he had replied, _You would have done the same for me. _It seemed that this was their pattern. It was a comforting thought, and he held on to it, together with a smile at the thought of Spock with a mint julep, as McCoy came into the main cabin, grumbling lightly.


	5. Chapter 5

"Did you let your parents know about this mission?" Kirk asked, suddenly. At the start of his shift with Spock, they had picked up transmissions from a nearby planet sufficiently close to the Neutral Zone to have been the site of more than one Starfleet skirmish in the past. He had reflected idly out loud on a long passed incident involving the _Potemkin _which had occurred during the five year mission and which he had remembered discussing with Spock at the time. It turned out that Spock's recollection of the politics surrounding the event was, unsurprisingly, excellent, and the two had fallen into a familiar debate on military strategy, the easier for being entirely impersonal and so redolent of evenings spent over chess in Kirk's cabin that Kirk had found no appetite for disturbing the peace with another foray into his self-imposed mission. Talk moved on, however, to their own situation: the _Polaris; _the missing Colton; Marillus, his Romulan contact. Wesley's pre-mission briefing drifted into Kirk's conscious, and his own preparations, the messages left for the ship's bridge crew and for his family, and he suddenly wondered about what Spock had left behind.

"This mission is classified, Captain."

"Yes, but didn't you at least let them know that you would be out of contact for a few months?"

"An absence of contact between us for that duration of time is entirely routine and the information would not have been expected," Spock said. Kirk reflected that the permanent absence of contact of the Genesis weeks might have changed this arrangement and said, very gently,

"Perhaps recent events might see a change in communication in your family."

"I see no reason to anticipate such a development."

Kirk wasn't so sure. _As I recall, I opposed your enlistment in Starfleet. It is possible that judgment was incorrect. Your associates are people of good character. _That had been a long way from Babel and the council on the admission of Coridan to the Federation. He remembered Sarek's forbidding, regal bearing, the first time they had met, his own naïve attempts to force a dialogue between Spock and his father, his understanding that his friendship with Spock had entirely failed to prepare him for dialogue with a full Vulcan, and an estranged one, at that.

In fact, thinking of it now, meeting Sarek had shown him the extent of the compromise Spock had made, in living among humans. And, conversely, how different Spock must always have been, growing up on Vulcan.

"Spock," he said now, following a train of thought, "why did you never tell me about your parents?"

"Specify," came the inevitable response. Kirk was less convinced than ever that any specification whatsoever was necessary, but was finding that there are some games which are easier to play when you have forty four days in hand.

"Well, you tell me – specifically. We're in orbit round Vulcan. I've got half the bridge crew in formal dress uniforms, which always somehow inhibits any normal behaviour and shortens everyone's fuse by several light years. I have McCoy acting like I've asked him to wear chainmail, and the basis of his diplomatic strategy is that the entire conundrum will be solved if he can somehow manage to lift three fingers in the air in an imitation of a _ta'al_ comparable only to that time I caught Uhura trying to teach Sulu and Chekhov old Earth sign language when Scotty had been overly liberal with the Scotch at the bridge crew Christmas party. I've got over a hundred delegates from God knows how many Federation planets, including a good number of ambassadors, in a pleasantly diverse range of colours, shapes and sizes, and a whole range of reasons why a third of them want to kill another third so that the remaining third can argue over whose fault it was and why it means they get enhanced territorial rights as a result. And you wait till your parents are actually _on board my ship, _so that I can make it clear in front of anyone who's listening (including, of course, Sarek and Amanda themselves) that the captain of the _Enterprise _ doesn't know that the key influential figure in the whole damn shooting match is his First Officer's father."

A small silence materialised while Kirk drew breath and realised how long he had waited to say all that.

"Plus, you know, Spock," he added, in more conciliatory tones, "that it might have been friendly to have dropped it into the conversation. I like to think it's the sort of personal detail I would have wanted to share with you about my life. Granted that it's unlikely my mother would have been the Vulcan ambassador, or any other ambassador. Instead, I'd be happy to share with you that she twice won a state rodeo competition and is still the only woman in Iowa to have done so on consecutive years."

Spock's ability to ignore Kirk's more random dialogue appeared to have survived the _fal-tor-pan_ intact.

"It is evident to me that the range of personal detail which humans choose to bring to the attention of others exceeds that which would be the preference of a Vulcan in similar circumstances."

Kirk gave his First a hard look. Not even Spock was going to pretend that this wasn't a blatant evasion of the question. Still, he thought – _forty four days _– and decided to play along.

"It's what friends do, Spock," he said, blandly, not expecting a response and failing, as a result, to be disappointed. He eyed up the Vulcan, took a breath and went on, "Remind me again why you read up on Garth, after Elba Two?"

Spock stiffened, almost imperceptibly. Looking at him with some sympathy, Kirk thought that the Vulcan was regretting that moment of confidence on Day Two, and then he said, levelly,

"In my view, my ability to provide the most effective support to the ship's commanding officer was likely to be enhanced by increasing my knowledge of relevant history and personal influences."

Not quite the same as _You said that he had been your hero_ but Kirk had asked for it. Nodding, as if to accept that he was backing Spock into a corner, he asked,

"And would you not accept, by the same token, that the fact of my First Officer being the son of the Vulcan Ambassador would have been of similar assistance to me?"

He watched the Vulcan curiously, wondering what the next subterfuge would be. Even as it occurred to him that the very act of concealment was its own admission, Spock surprised him by declining to feint.

"I was not disposed to reveal the information at that time, sir."

"Not good enough, First Officer," Kirk said, with a sort of gentle inexorability.

There was a brief silence, during which Kirk declined to study the readings on the console or pretend he was doing anything other than waiting for an answer. And after a few seconds, Spock turned to him slowly with the air of one about to give voice to a communication of more moment than _Vulcans do not..._ Kirk stilled.

"Sir, internal interrogation of my own memories suggests to me that youthful experiences had resulted in a degree of conflict relating to personal connections on Vulcan and that at the time of embarking on a career in Starfleet it might have been logical to have developed a differentiated approach to former and future associates."

Kirk willed himself not to react. He schooled his features not to betray the slightest visible response to Spock's words. It was ridiculous, utterly ridiculous for a seasoned officer of considerable renown, former Starfleet Chief of Operations, foremost military commander of his generation, to be considering revelations from his own First Officer exactly in the manner of one approaching an untamed wild animal, but that was the image which flashed, unbidden, into Kirk's mind. He was aware of an ancient instinct not to rush, to make himself open and receptive to what he was being given - an unlooked for confidence from a source he had hitherto expected to take to the hills, showing only a clean pair of heels at the first sign of personal questions.

Was it possible that this Spock might, on one level, be more inclined to reveal parts of his history precisely because of a level of detachment from them which meant that he might examine them objectively, almost in tandem with Kirk, as though considering events which had happened to someone else entirely? Before Genesis, certainly during the five year mission, Kirk could not have conceived of a conversation with his First which would have involved Spock making the revelation he had just offered. _I had a conflicted and lonely childhood which gave rise to real difficulties with my family, so when I joined Starfleet I decided on a fresh start. I wanted to keep my worlds apart._

And he remembered, again, McCoy's words from the day before. _You're trying to get him to compromise, Jim, and he doesn't like compromise. His solution is to go one way or the other._

If McCoy's analysis were correct (and Kirk was far from convinced it was), what did that make the right thing to do now? Only one way to go, he reasoned, and that was wherever his instinct led him. Kirk was a starship captain, his life was about exploratory and military advance, so the only way to go was always forward.

He said, gently,

"I understand that, Spock. But that was before, wasn't it?"

"Please elucidate, Captain."

"Well, before you and I met, for a start. You embarked on a career in Starfleet, as you put it, a hell of a long time before we met. By the time I joined the _Enterprise_ you had already had well over a decade to accommodate your past within your adult life. And we worked together, we were friends, for years before the conference on Coridan, before I first met Sarek. I understand the difficulty, Commander. But surely either friendship or duty must have persuaded you that the logical thing to do would have been to talk to me about it?"

He wondered whether he was pushing too hard. He hadn't expected to end up here from asking _Did you let your parents know about this mission? _But you played the cards to hand and there was still over an hour till McCoy was scheduled to wake up. Besides, another truth was that much as he and Spock had been shooting the breeze, in a blessed familiarity rather like revisiting a former home you never thought you'd see again, it was impossible to do so without bumping up against the present, just as walking around the house you had grown up in would involve a complex mixture of same old (the view from the bedroom window, the dimensions of the living room) and the reminder of time passing (the new kitchen, the fact that the magnolia tree in the garden had breathed its last and left a gap behind).

Affectionate nostalgia received an abrupt knock with Spock's next words.

"In my view, sir, then and now, your belief that you understand the difficulty may result from an over-confident analysis of the situation."

It felt less like a wild horse taking to the hills and more like it had settled on its haunches and corrected the way Kirk was holding out the halter, but he swallowed the reaction and put the halter down.

"Your turn to elucidate, First Officer."

Whether Spock had truly a limited understanding of the distancing effect of informing Kirk that his understanding of his friend was less perfect than he thought, or whether in fact it had been (like Kirk's words earlier "_and you wait till your parents are actually on board my ship…"_) something he had wanted to say for a long time, Kirk was unsure. Spock was no less certain with regard to his own response to Kirk's request to elucidate, but he looked at the hazel invitation and knew himself to speak from an old compulsion as he said,

"Sir, I served for many years as the first and only Vulcan officer in Starfleet. The value that you placed on my contributions to the command team of the _Enterprise _was and is a matter for no little appreciation on my part. It is nevertheless the fact that the true difference between your approach to my background and the approach adopted by the doctor amounts to little more than methodology. It was always clear to me that you regarded my differences as a personal choice rather than a cultural norm and also that you perceived as entirely alien an officer who had in fact made profound adaptations in order to serve in Starfleet. It was not evident to me, either before you met my parents or, indeed, after that point, that you had any true understanding of the nature of the uncompromised Vulcan ethos."

The two regarded each other whilst Kirk allowed himself to hear Spock's words. He quelled an angry instinct to challenge, knowing the truth behind the accusation in Spock's last sentence, realising that he could hardly claim otherwise given his own earlier reflections on his first encounter with Sarek. He took a breath, let it out and said,

"Perhaps some of that is fair. But Spock – how the hell was I supposed to understand if you didn't talk to me? Don't you think it might have been easier for me to meet your parents if I had understood better?"

He was back in engineering with Amanda.

_It sounded more like a command._

_Of course. He's a Vulcan. I'm his wife._

Spock was right. He had been utterly unprepared. Presiding over a diplomatic mission, with a difficult decision at stake and the paramount need for respect for diversity, he had heard the words of his own First Officer's mother about the dictates of her husband, and tolerance had fled. Might it have been easier had he known in advance? Might it have been easier if those words had not been spoken by the parent of the person who had come to mean the most to him? Was it because he needed to feel an empathy for Spock, that he would struggle more with evidence of difference which he could have accepted more easily in the life of someone less significant to him? He reflected on his reaction to other patriarchal societies (Droxine on Ardana, the choices Eve had made on Rigel 12) and knew himself to have been untroubled by the differences, precisely because the individuals hadn't mattered to him.

He doubted Spock would be comforted by this reflection.

And Spock gave him the truth.

"I had no evidence that you would find it anything other than challenging to appreciate the nuances of my upbringing and of my parents' way of life, Captain, and it did not occur to me that the impediment would give rise to any practical difficulties. I calculated that the probability that you would not encounter each other during the five year mission was 258 to one."

_It was too hard to tell you and I figured you were never going to meet._

The hardest thing for Kirk to swallow in this particular admission was the fact that Spock, in working out a strategy to keep Kirk and his parents apart, had only factored in the five year mission. It would not have required a person of Spock's intelligence and his propensity for calculating random figures of probability to have arrived at a different formula in relation to the possibility of a permanent lack of acquaintance – in relation to the likelihood of the Vulcan Ambassador never encountering the man whose Starfleet career, even in the early years of the five year mission, was always going to be meteoric. Kirk had known, almost from the first days on the _Enterprise, _long before he could have articulated exactly what Spock meant to him, that the Vulcan was somehow a permanent part of his life, that whatever time and space and the dictates of Starfleet HQ would bring, that this would always be so. A conviction clearly less than mutual – as was evidenced, of course, by Spock departing for Gol at the end of the mission. Once again, Kirk shied away from the thought. Later for Gol. He still had forty four days.

He wondered, though, about the odds of 258 to one. Spock's ability to calculate fabricated odds of probability to several decimal points had always been, as far as Kirk was concerned (not that he had ever challenged Spock on the matter) a private tease, a way of softening the more sober moments on the ship or the more severe instances of Vulcan commentary by the nearest Spock would come to a standing joke. How much was the Vulcan aware of the barbed nature of some of these present exchanges and how much could Kirk construe _258 to one _as a peace offering?

And Spock himself, empirical memory or not, was also back on the _Enterprise, _en route to Babel. He had watched Kirk with his parents, seeing all too clearly the rejection and alienation on Kirk's face and listening with an almost visceral discomfort to Kirk's clumsy attempts to make peace between Spock and his father. Nothing in the encounter had inclined him to regret his earlier silence to Kirk, nothing had been anything other than profoundly painful to Sarek's son and to the First Officer of the _Enterprise _and nothing had escaped him as he had tried, with an utter lack of success, to ease the inner turmoil through meditation, during a brief time off duty in that first, difficult day.

His face remembered something before his conscious mind, then, the pain (emotional rather than physical) of the blow his mother had delivered to him, her appeal to him, and how he had turned away. _There must be some part of me in you, some part that I still can reach. If being Vulcan is more important to you, then you'll stand there speaking rules and regulations from Starfleet and Vulcan philosophy and let your father die. And I'll hate you for the rest of my life._

She had told Kirk that Vulcan was a better way, but she was as conflicted as her son in some ways and he had always known that. She had said in his quarters than _human_ was not a dirty word, and he had shut the sound out, said, _How can you have lived on Vulcan so long, married a Vulcan, raised a son on Vulcan, without understanding what it means to be a Vulcan? _Perhaps, had Kirk heard him, it would have provided some comfort after Kirk's difficulty with Amanda's bland first words to him – _He's a Vulcan. I'm his wife. _If Spock had been given a choice, after Genesis, illogical though it was to contemplate such a thing, he would have chosen some memories to have been excluded from the _fal-tor-pan_ process, and one such comprised his words to Amanda as Sarek lay critically ill. He had told Kirk once, on Psi 2000, that some of his deepest pain had been his failure to nurture and support the humanity in her. Strange that only now, looking back across the years, he realised that she had equated Vulcan philosophy with the Starfleet handbook as twin refuges – something otherwise only McCoy had seen. McCoy and perhaps also the man now in front of him. But he had chosen not to listen, perhaps because she had reminded him of their shared grief during his lonely childhood – he had not been prepared to discuss it, then of all times, and she had said _Go to him _and he had said _I cannot _and she had hit him. They would have had to live with that fallout for the rest of their lives, without Kirk's intervention which had allowed him to save Sarek's life and restored both his parents to him. Which meant, perhaps, that there were more important things than understanding Vulcan culture.

He remembered, suddenly, his waking dreams, that sense of hidden colour, almost out of sight. The bright shade was more visible, now, and he was aware at the same time of the razor sharp edges. Again, he found himself wanting to retreat from Kirk's forty eight day journey and again he found it in himself to follow the agreed direction.

Kirk watched his friend's face and had some sense of inner struggle. He had always known that the Coridan conference would have been a rite of passage for Spock, an unlooked-for and unwanted gateway to a new mutual awareness for those in his life he had tried to keep apart. Quite how hard that had been, he had never known; they had never spoken of it. It was as though the blood transfusion Spock had given Sarek in sickbay had been, at the same time, a letting out of the past, like the ancient witch doctor practices of which Spock had always accused McCoy. Blood-letting, the release of old poison.

He should never have let it go. He should have taken Sarek and Amanda and the other diplomats to the council at Babel and arranged joint sick leave for Spock and himself and sat down for two days with a chess board and a bottle of brandy and made the Vulcan talk to him.

And he should have told him the rest, too. He should have said that he had told Amanda about his affection for Spock, that it had felt awkward and almost, strangely, disloyal; that he had felt both a strong warmth for Spock's mother and a profound bewilderment that this woman, bred on Earth in the twenty third century, the mother of his brilliant and gifted First Officer, could obey her husband's orders and accept the estrangement of her husband and son as a logical price to pay. Amanda had, at a single blow, revealed the depths of Spock's unhappy childhood and corroborated McCoy's reiteration of Kirk's view that Spock's best destiny was compromise (_neither human nor Vulcan; at home nowhere except Starfleet). _And, more oddly, had almost won his sympathy for Sarek. Amanda had said _Sarek wanted Spock to follow his teachings, as Sarek followed the teachings of his own father. _And Kirk had been surprised because he had, in fact, understood this – because part of the bewildering, extraordinary, transcendental joy of being given command of the _Enterprise _had been the look on his own father's face and the knowledge, deep within, that he had made his father proud of him, that he had followed in his footsteps.

He looked at Spock now, and suddenly saw Sarek's features in his son's face. Funny how that happened, sometimes. You would think that there was no resemblance, but then a person could turn, or smile, or lift an eyebrow, and you were back in a starship sickbay or in your own apartment in San Francisco, face to face with the mysterious dynamic of family relationship. Spock wouldn't know, he had only ever seen Sam dead on the floor in his quarters in Deneva. Kirk banished the memory, and said,

"Well, it must have been very disappointing for you, Mr Spock."

"Captain?"

"But it must happen occasionally. I mean, to an inveterate calculator of the probabilities in any one situation. What are the odds, Commander, of you being beaten by the odds, so as to speak?"

Spock said,

"An experience very familiar to me, sir, after serving under you for a prolonged period of time in deep space," and Kirk was aware of a rush of warmth, of being absurdly touched by the compliment. He smiled, said,

"Thank you, Spock," and something reasserted itself again between the two men, the mooring rope he had held in his hands when they had talked, two days earlier, about the Gorn and Cestus Three. He held on to it, by way of a substitute of reaching out to Spock himself. He didn't think the Vulcan was ready for human contact. And, remembering the conversation about the Gorn and holding on, he said, in the manner of one risking ground gained instead of resting on laurels,

"Interesting, though, don't you think, to consider your father in the light of your views on my aggressive human tendencies?"

Spock raised an eyebrow. It was a rather wary eyebrow but on the other hand an eyebrow which looked genuinely uncertain as to what was coming.

"Well, so far as I remember, you informed us that your father would be well versed in the ancient Vulcan art of neck-breaking."

"_Tal-shaya_," said the possessor of a Vulcan neck, automatically.

"Spock, you can call it what you like, but my clear recollection is that it is still about breaking people's necks. Moreover, according to you, it is the kind of breaking necks you do when you know absolutely what you're doing, which suggests both study and practice. Not that I'm suggesting," he added hastily, "that your father practiced, exactly. At least, not on humanoids. Perhaps on chickens?" he suggested helpfully, with a bright smile directed at the unyielding expression opposite. "Do you have chickens on Vulcan, Spock?"

"We do not," his First Officer confirmed. "There are, however, numerous indigenous species not dissimilar to Earth wolves, bears and foxes."

"All with necks?"

"That would necessarily be the case, Captain."

"And you are all vegetarians. No contradictions there? I am sure you told me it is illogical to kill without reason. That Vulcans don't approve of violence."

"Your assumptions on how my father developed an expertise in _tal-shaya_ are pure hypothesis, Captain."

"Maybe," Kirk said. He was enjoying himself, slightly to his surprise. He hadn't thought that discussing Sarek's homicidal tendencies with Spock would be enjoyable, but life was full of unexpected bonuses and there was no question that the atmosphere in the cabin had lightened and that Spock was playing the game. He thought about that. No question. Spock was playing the game. He said, curiously,

"I remember what you said, Spock, because it was such a shock at the time. You said to me, _My father is quite capable of killing. Logically and efficiently."_

Spock said, gravely,

"I hope, Captain, you are not debating that my father's approach would ever be anything but logical."

Kirk, without intending to, was forcibly reminded of the one exception to this, which Spock, of all people, would never know. _Forgive me, T'Lar. My logic is uncertain, where my son is concerned. _He would tell Spock that, some day. He deserved to know, and Sarek deserved for him to know, even if neither would ever thank him.

Instead he said, aiming for a tone between light and serious,

"Clearly an indication that you hold him in the highest esteem, Commander, as you should. Despite your choices en route to Babel."

Spock said,

"If you are referring, sir, to my postponement of surgery on assuming temporary command of the ship, I put it to you that any other arrangement would have been a dereliction of duty."

"An entirely understandable dereliction of duty."

"Perhaps. A dereliction of duty none the less. Would you not have done the same, in my position?"

And Kirk thought about this, properly, for the first time. His mother, or Sam, or Peter, in desperate straits, needing help only he could give. His ship under attack, his _Enterprise, _just as much flesh of his flesh. He gave Spock the best answer he could.

"I don't know, Spock. Perhaps it was easier to criticise at the time. I think," he said, exploring memory and understanding something for the first time as he did so, "sometimes you make decisions no different from the choices your human colleagues would make, but you articulate them in different ways, so it is harder for us to understand them."

"By this, I assume you are referring to a lack of emotional histrionics?"

"Perhaps," he smiled slightly. "Yes, I think so." He had said _I'm sorry about your father, _and Spock had said _It could adversely affect our mission. Worry is a human emotion. I accept what has happened. _But the walls had come down, afterwards, in Sickbay, when Spock had suggested that Thelev, the architect of the scheme to undermine the conference, had been Orion. He had said _I don't understand why I didn't think of it earlier _and Kirk's response _You might have had something else on your mind _had been met with _That hardly seems likely, _which was normal Spock tease language and therefore an open admission that he had been under terrible strain.

Both he and McCoy should have realised that earlier, instead of giving Spock a hard time of it. If the Vulcan had his own mechanisms for survival, that was his choice, just as it was everyone else's. And, of course, Kirk had known all this at the time. He remembered the long walk to the bridge, sick and dizzy, McCoy at his side like glue, on a mission to convince Spock to relinquish command and undertake the blood transfusion, the determination to get Spock to sickbay by pretending a recovery from the knife attack which was far from genuine, and then, of course, his own choice – to stay on the conn when his ship was threatened. Perhaps he had made the same choice as Spock, after all. It had always been the _Enterprise, _for both of them.

Spock's face, when he had appeared on the bridge. He remembered it still, with an inner smile of affection. He had rarely seen the expression so open. Overwhelming relief – firstly, that Kirk was safe, secondly, that consequently so was Sarek. Doubt had followed – that it could be this easy, because life was about hard choices for Spock and not being let off the hook; doubt that he should be allowed to let go, just for once, and do what he really wanted to do. Kirk had been a breath from collapse at the time. He had known the strength of Spock's relief simply from the lack of serious opposition. Under any other circumstances, the Vulcan would have read the precise level of Kirk's pain, the rate of his heartbeat and his general physical condition from a distance of at least four of the ship's decks.

The memory of Spock's anxiety about his father, cloaked as always in words such as _duty, _brought to mind Kirk's own exchanges with Sarek, and the fact that his closest connection with Sarek would always be the time which by definition excluded Spock, their shared grief after Genesis. He remembered that when Sarek had first appeared in his apartment, he had looked up to see the hooded figure in the doorway and, for the briefest of moments, thought it was Spock. And then the oh-so-strange feeling of Sarek's mind in his, a phenomenon he had only ever previously experienced with Sarek's son, and the naked revelation to Sarek of what Spock's death had meant to him. Sarek had taken him, in his thoughts, straight back to the reactor room, hardly a shock at the time since the scene was still playing itself out endlessly behind Kirk's eyes, but actually being there, hearing Spock's farewell in Spock's voice from his father's lips had robbed Kirk of his composure. And, of course, sent him down the road which led, ultimately, to Mount Seleya and redemption.

At the start of this conversation, he had suggested that things with Spock's family might have changed since Mount Seleya and Spock hadn't agreed, but _I see no reason to anticipate such a development_ didn't factor in the road which Kirk and Sarek had walked together. It had started with his confession in the apartment (_your son meant more to me than you can know_) and, oddly, Sarek's own understanding of that, pre-dating Kirk's words, because he had come to see Kirk in the confident expectation that it was Kirk Spock would have chosen as the keeper of his _katra_. Sarek, of all people, had been the one to count the cost (_your ship, your son_) and, perhaps because it had been a sort of trade (Kirk's son for Sarek's), at the end of the longest journey of Kirk's life, it had been to Sarek that Kirk had managed to admit a truth which Harry Morrow had ignored and which Kirk had never brought himself to articulate to another being, _If I hadn't tried, the cost would have been my soul._

All of which meant that the future held a very different relationship for him and Sarek. Perhaps Spock had been right not to trust him all those years ago. But perhaps there were no short cuts, perhaps you had to start with humiliation and proceed to understanding only through loss and grief and hard-won compassion.

There was a noise from the other cabin. McCoy was getting up.

Spock said,

"Captain, are you aware that the probability is extremely high that Commander Coltron is no longer alive?"

Kirk shot him a look. He was due off duty and Spock knew it; the Vulcan could only be raising the subject of their mission if something about it had been troubling him throughout their shift.

"Clearly. Your point, Mr Spock?"

"I am aware that Starfleet are anxious to conceal traces of illegal espionage activity. However, the same odds that exist against Commander Coltron still being alive could also be quoted against the possibility of locating and retrieving his remains. Moreover, from the point of view of Starfleet, this mission represents a very significant deployment of equipment and personnel simply for that purpose, even given the political context."

"You think there are reasons for concern about what we are walking into."

Spock lifted an eyebrow.

"It would be logical to assume that the situation may be complex."

Kirk smiled. He was back where he belonged.

Tomorrow, he would try Spock on chess.


	6. Chapter 6

"Check," said Kirk.

He watched the Vulcan studying the board. He had found it easier to persuade Spock to play than Spock had found it to make much progress against him. At any other time, beating Spock three times consecutively with little resistance would have been a minor cause for celebration. He would have offered his condolences to Spock for failing to identify the most logical moves, Spock would have commented on the unpredictable strategies adopted by humans, and Kirk would have said, "Commander, I understand perfectly that you have to rationalise defeat at the hands of a human and I would like you to know that I'm prepared to offer a wide margin of tolerance in relation to the excuses you proffer, provided they make you feel better". To which Spock would have said "I am sure, Captain, that you are aware of the provisions of Starfleet Regulation 139 paragraph 5 on maintaining high standards of cultural sensitivity towards alien crew members," and Kirk would have said, "I am absolutely positive that you made that up. Isn't there a rule which prescribes penalties for fabricating random regulations?" Spock would have offered to provide training on the Starfleet Handbook for all senior personnel, and Kirk would have said "No, thank you" and offered him a drink with the next game, and Spock would have said "No, thank you", and Kirk would have poured him one anyway and set the pieces up.

And now – this technically flawless delivery with no sign of the personal connection which had been the Vulcan's chief weapon against Kirk. Ten years ago, Spock would have spotted any one of a number of clues which would have told him precisely what moves Kirk was planning, often before his captain had thought of them, like signposts in the dark, like tiny, distant cloud formations to expert meteorologists. Before Mount Seleya, Spock had, on average, been able to predict to within six Earth minutes when Kirk would have his first coffee of the day and when he would start counter-signing annual performance reviews (usually, in Spock's experience, shortly after the fifth time Spock had reminded him and within an average of seven point three hours of the deadline set by Starfleet Regulations).

Spock broke into Kirk's thoughts, catching him unaware. He was still studying the board, head at an angle, his gaze on Kirk's challenging knight. He said,

"Captain, may I ask you an unrelated question, connected to your review of past missions?"

"Yes, of course," Kirk said, pleasurably surprised that Spock was being forthcoming, curious as to what would follow.

"It relates to events which have, for the sake of convenience but not of accuracy, been logged under Stardate 3134.0."

Which should have been enough to warn Kirk what was coming. Instead, he smiled at his own knight, tilted his head and said,

"Remind me."

"I am speaking," Spock said, "of events following our encounter with the phenomenon which, somewhat poetically, referred to itself as the Guardian of Forever."

Kirk's attention snapped back to Spock's face. He had said _Yes of course, _had been pleased by the question, had (after all, of his own volition and with a view to helping his friend to restoration and final healing) invited Spock on a forty eight day journey down memory lane. He had not contemplated his own darker memories, his failures, those he had lost, and was far from sure he wanted to discuss Edith Keeler with the person who had likened his own reaction to Gary Mitchell's terrible fate to McCoy's interest in carrying out studies of bacteria.

But it was too late to be squeamish. He said, rather briefly, "What did you have in mind?" and Spock said,

"I know that you had formed an emotional attachment to Ms Keeler, albeit within a relatively short amount of time. It was also the case, however, that this attachment would never have survived, given your different destinies. I informed you as soon as was possible of the implications of Ms Keeler's alternate futures. You were aware that her survival would lead to the end of everything significant not only in terms of your personal life (your family, your friends, your ship) but also in terms of human civilisation, Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets. Yet you hesitated. It was not a logical reaction and remains inconsistent with the competencies and behaviours necessary for command. It is also inconsistent with the values I believe to you be yours. Are you able to elucidate?"

Kirk heard the words but scarcely understood them. The road home had never seemed so long. He looked at the Vulcan face, searched it for signs of the compassion which had guided him through that terrible time. For the person who, in the face of McCoy's unbearable accusation - _Do you know what you just did? _- had interposed the protection of _He knows, doctor, _and who had managed, in the days following their return to the _Enterprise_, to find hours out of a schedule without spare minutes to play chess, to offer silent sympathy, or simply to be there, at times when Kirk knew perfectly well he should be in at least three other places. Sometimes, especially when he remembered the compassionate but relentless strength with which Vulcan logic had steered him towards that moment of decision in the street outside the mission, Kirk had wanted to throw something at Spock, to yell at him, tell him to get out and leave Kirk to his own blackness. But when the worst of it had passed, in fact by the time they had got the call to go to Deneva, when another, very different tragedy had beckoned, he had known himself ready to face it in a way that would not have been the case without that quiet and unconditional support. They had been playing chess then, as well, just before the orders came from HQ. Spock had beaten him, three games out of four that week, and Kirk had said, "You have no mercy, Commander," and Spock had said, "Would you want it any other way, Captain?" and Kirk had said, through a sudden rush of understanding, "No, Spock, never," and the Vulcan had, uncharacteristically, reached out so briefly Kirk had hardly felt the touch on his arm, and that was when he knew that neither of them had been talking about chess and that he had managed both to thank Spock and to forgive him for being right about Edith. And then Uhura had called to relay the message from HQ and they had gone to Deneva and never talked about it again.

All of which meant that he should have been better placed to deal with Spock's question now, but anger swept him as he faced Spock in the cabin of the _Polaris. _It felt like anger with Spock, but even then he knew it was at least partly anger with the person in front of him for not being Spock, for not being the person who had been there all those years ago.

"Forgive me, Mr Spock. I'm only human. I loved her and I had to stand by and let her die and oddly enough, the decision was difficult. So I hesitated. I realise this is difficult for you to understand. I hope it doesn't impact too negatively on your professional regard for my competencies, as you put it, to the point that you have doubts about serving under a flawed human being."

When the Vulcan spoke again, his tone was subtly changed. If Kirk hadn't known Spock's voice rather better than he knew the notes of a scale in C major or the tune of the Star Spangled Banner, he might have missed it, but after the impassivity of the past few days, Kirk's ears pricked almost like a cat's.

"Sir, you misunderstand me. I have no wish to cause either offence or distress. I merely seek to better my own understanding. You have identified a potential weakness in the _fal-tor-pan_ in terms of the level to which the process may not compensate for a lack of empirical memory, and I understood our recent dialogue to be an attempt to address this issue. As your perspective, while subjective, is the constant in this respect, your evaluation of my ability to understand certain dimensions of human response merits further consideration and I therefore identified the encounter with Ms Keeler as a paramount example of the contrast between an emotional and a logical approach to what was essentially a critical decision matrix. I am aware that my understanding of these events is deficient in your eyes and I wish to improve it."

Kirk thought, for once, that a refusal to speak Standard had its uses. He knew Spock could not have brought himself to deliver this message starkly, but he also knew he himself would have found it hard to hear in terms less obfuscated than those Spock had just used. It was a little like someone breaking the news of a bereavement in French. You heard it second hand, through a barrier, not entirely certain of the content, and by the time you'd conjugated the odd irregular verb, the meaning had sunk in with slightly less pain than might have been occasioned by a more direct communication. _Is it possible that Mount Seleya wasn't entirely a success? You're the one who knew me before and afterwards. You think I've changed; I'm trying to understand how. If I can understand about Edith, I can understand anything._

He took a breath and let it out, very slowly. He owed Spock this – he had offered it and the fact that the acceptance hadn't looked quite as he expected changed nothing.

"Spock – of course, you're right. There was no other decision I could have reached. It wasn't just logic, it was emotion. It was the right thing to do, and of course I wanted to do it – to save humanity, to save all of our futures, but also to save those I loved. My family. My friends. My ship. Yes. But falling in love – I don't believe you don't know what it's like, Spock. Don't you? I remember Zarabeth. Leila Kalomi. It puts you in a different place. It's like a drug. You see things differently, like you've had ophthalmic surgery. You need to be with that person. Letting them die, leaving them to obliteration – it's more than hard. It goes against nature. I don't believe – I really don't believe, on one level, that you don't know this."

Spock fell subject, then, to a curious sensation. His understanding of empirical memory was that it was an organic thing, that it could surface much as a child or an animal may turn at the sound of its name. He had told Kirk that he had no empirical memory and he believed this to be the case, troubled only by his waking dreams of painful colour, which he knew in some way to be a thing of times passed, something which had survived Mount Seleya. Beyond that, he found his memories to be neatly filed, accessible logically by identifying through rational process the sequence he sought. He would have known exactly how to respond to a question such as _Tell me about the first time you met McCoy, _by simply calculating the time this had taken place and locating the memory of the occasion. (McCoy had said, _You must be Spock, only person on board who could possibly be you, _and he had said, _In fact, there are four hundred and twenty eight other candidates, Doctor, but anatomically, existentially and factually you are, indeed, correct, _and McCoy had stared at him in a sort of blank horror and said, _Remind me, Jim, how long you said this mission was going to be?_)

But this was different. Kirk had said _Falling in love – I don't believe you don't know what it's like, _and he had felt the tug of memory. It had no name, though, no date - he didn't think he had heard those exact words before, but he knew that they awoke in him a time past, a time when he had found an answer, perhaps the same as the one he sought now for what had happened to Edith Keeler. And then it was there, he captured it. Omega system. It had been McCoy, not Kirk. _I feel sorrier for you than I do for him, because you'll never know the things that love can drive a man to. _How had those words come to him now, what was the connection and what had been his answer? He put it away from him to consider later, along with the conundrum of what had survived Mount Seleya.

"Sir, you will recall that at the time of the two encounters you mention, I was in an altered state. You were not, and it is still the case that you let pass at least one occasion when Ms Keeler might have died without your intervention. You did not know at that point there would be another."

"It wasn't her time," he said, painfully. "She was supposed to die in a road accident. She did."

"That is not entirely accurate, Captain. She was supposed to die in a road accident, but that was averted due to the fact that your acquaintance with her had already changed history. She manifestly would not originally have died in the particular road accident which in fact claimed her life with us as witnesses, since she would not originally have been invited by you to watch a cinematographic recording, nor crossed the road when alerted by your reunion with Dr McCoy."

"I supposed you're right," he said, "I hadn't thought of it that way." It didn't seem very important. It had never seemed important and it was a long time ago, now – even in his time, centuries, of course, in hers. He looked at the Vulcan and had a sense of missing something. "What are you trying to say – that I could have missed the only chance?"

"Yes. You were facing a decision which involved the annihilation of mankind, you were given a chance to save the universe, you had no knowledge that there would be another and you did not take it. I know you believe that my failure to demonstrate undue emotion is a weakness, but it is not easy for me to understand why your hesitation was something to be emulated. I repeat that I do not seek to give offence, sir, but to understand."

He smiled, slightly. "I know that, Spock." And then, "You are saying that people aren't threatened with fatal accidents every day. That the likelihood would have been that it wouldn't have happened again. And we would have had to choose between the rest of the universe – and actually killing her."

"Yes, Captain, that is exactly what I meant."

Kirk took one point two nanoseconds to thank whichever divine power had not presented him with that particular choice, and said, wryly,

"If you are asking me to appreciate what you and your logic have brought to my decision making process over the years, Spock, it's not necessary. I always have."

"That was not my intention. I still find your hesitation hard to understand, given your relatively recent acquaintance with Ms Keeler, but I accept both your comments and the fact that you may not be able to convey the basis of the rationale for your actions."

Kirk looked at him askance. Was Spock really equating the history of love with its strength? Was his First Officer truly finding it difficult to understand that it would be hard to abandon a woman you loved to a mangled death under a passing truck simply because you'd only known her a few weeks? What, after all, if it had been someone else?

"Would you have found it that easy, then, in my place?"

Spock said, immediately,

"It would have been both necessary and the right thing to do."

"Of course. And if it had been your father, or your mother?"

"They would have understood."

"Knowing your father," Kirk said, with feeling, "I have no doubt as to his reaction. I'm talking, however, about yours. Spock," he added, more with curiosity than provocation, "what if it had been me?"

The two regarded each other, and Kirk thought, then, inevitably, _What if it had been Spock?_

What if it had? He had known Spock for years before they had ended up stealing clothes from a street in twentieth century New York. He hadn't recently met Spock and fallen swiftly into a whirlwind on discovering an extraordinary kinship and visionary perspective in a pair of beautiful grey eyes into which he should never, by the laws of space and time, have looked. Spock had simply been part of him – he had been chess opponent, conscience, friend, support, companion, challenge and comfort for twenty four hours a day throughout the five year mission, such that Kirk's visceral identification with his ship was hardly divisible from his friendship with the other half of his command team.

What if it had been Spock? And the immediate thought came, _I would have found a way. _But then, he had thought that about Edith, and he had failed and she had been dead now for three hundred years and Spock had said _You may not be able to convey the basis of the rationale for your actions _and was still waiting for an answer.

He wondered if Spock, too, was thinking _I would have found a way. _Kirk had, after all, changed the programming on the _Kobayashi Maru, _he had faced Khan in the Mutara Nebula and said a terrible goodbye in the reactor room of the _Enterprise _and he had still gone back to Genesis and to Mount Seleya and he had found a way and here they were, on the _Polaris, _talking about Edith Keeler. Did that mean that Spock was right about the history of love?

He didn't want to hear what Spock was going to say in answer to his question, so instead he said, by way both of diversion and of his own answer,

"What does your didactic memory tell you that Edith said about you, Mr Spock?"

Spock raised an eyebrow which looked rather relieved that it had not been called upon to answer Kirk's last question.

"There were a number of instances at which Ms Keeler commented on various of my attributes, Captain. Are you referring to the occasion on which she complimented my handling of the toolbox as worthy of a professional thief?"

Kirk laughed, caught by surprise. It was partly the relief of tension, he knew, the sudden descent into nonsense from an unbearable discussion on the relative ease of letting Spock or Edith die a horrible death, and all the past choices he had made which sometimes haunted him between waking and sleeping. It was also the rush of pleasure at the fact that Spock was reaching out, was consciously lightening the atmosphere, perhaps for the first time since Mount Seleya. He said, still smiling,

"No, though I am delighted to hear that that particular memory is preserved intact. Your criminal tendencies have always been among those I particularly valued." He hesitated, and decided to change tack. Perhaps Spock would find it difficult, perhaps he didn't need to hear out loud Edith's long ago, long-remembered comment, perhaps (and judging from the look in his face) he already knew. Spock had always wore a particular expression when he anticipated emotional demonstrations, not unlike a horse shying. McCoy had used to call it running at the first sign of trouble. He remembered a previous excursion to Romulus which had ended in tragedy and also in near tragedy, Stiles trying to thank Spock for saving his life, and Spock's brusque rejoinder, lightning-swift to avoid gratitude and embarrassment. _I saved a trained navigator so he could return to duty. I am capable of no other feelings in such matters._

The truth was that Spock had asked _Where would you estimate we belong, Miss Keeler? _and Edith had replied, _You? At his side, as if you've always been there and always will. _ At least she'd been right about that. Thank God.

He said, instead, knowing Spock would know he was changing the subject,

"It was the first time I had heard you talk about that unfortunate accident you had as a child."

"A small and necessary exaggeration, Captain, in order to preserve safety and avoid detection."

"In other words, you lied."

"I contributed to a necessary degree of subterfuge in order to ensure the success of our mission."

"I think that's what I just said."

"Captain, I have another question."

Kirk prepared himself, determined not to be caught unaware this time, lulled into a sense of false security by the soothing return to the old game.

"Go on."

"Was it not possible for a starship captain of your experience, even under the pressure of the moment, to have suggested a more likely scenario than a mechanical rice picker?"

He felt the smile breaking out then, like sunshine.

"Just think of it, Spock, as a moment of inspiration. I have always been rather proud of it."

"Captain?"

"Yes, Spock?"

"Checkmate."

Kirk looked sharply at the chessboard and then up at Spock's face. Was that – _smugness? _Just how far had Spock travelled on his journey from Mount Seleya? That he was still, intrinsically, himself, was now clear to Kirk, that they could step back into the same language of tease and counter-tease, that Kirk could, without question, rely on the same combination of intellect, courage, compassion and dry humour. What Kirk had been seeking, what he had thought lost, was Spock's ancient understanding, the bone-deep knowledge of Kirk born of a thousand emotional dilemmas which the Vulcan now professed to find oblique. Kirk needed to know the knowledge was there and he found that he needed, almost as much, for Spock to be prepared to admit to it.

But now – this. Exactly how much of the conversation had been deliberately engineered in order for Spock to checkmate him? He didn't know. He had an answer at least to one question, though, and he reached gracefully to tip over his king in defeat, just as McCoy came into the cabin.


	7. Chapter 7

"So, how's it going, with you and Spock?" McCoy asked, inevitably. So far, their shift had included filing three routine encrypted reports, implementing a course diversion to avoid a Romulan vessel and a running commentary on the food replicators in tones of Southern indignation. The doctor sat, now, nursing a coffee before the end of the shift, having made it more than clear that nothing in the coffee was likely to provide any significant obstacle to his approaching engagement with oblivion. "'Course, you know, Jim," he had said, "coffee is actually supposed to have caffeine in it. Too much to ask of Starfleet to figure out the programming and I'll bet you anything you like they've purposely decided to include caffeine in the list of prohibited substances, anyway. Should have applied the same effort to replicating a decent set of sleeping quarters. How in the blazes am I supposed to go to sleep on that rubberised shelf they call a cabin, anyway? Just as well, not as though I can trust Spock to remember how to count in double figures any more, probably better to stay awake anyway."

Kirk had listened to all this with rather less than a twentieth of his brain, rather enjoying the familiar background noise. Few people would have deemed it as relaxing as a Beethoven string quartet, but then it arose in few people an incorrigible association with the happiest and most fulfilling period of their lives, which they had once believed lost forever. And then the tone had shifted, just a fraction, as McCoy's drawl became a little less Georgian summer evening and a little more _Enterprise _CMO. _So, how's it going, with you and Spock?_

He said, ducking the question with an ease born of a long habit of ignoring forty five percent of McCoy's commentary on the ship's First Officer,

"Bones, what's wrong with the sleep inducer?"

"You're kidding, right? Sleep inducer, my God – the very name's enough that you'd rather take cordrazine. Look, Jim, if I want to go to sleep in a hammock with a fresh breeze and someone playing the fiddle a long way away, I'll go home and sling myself up in the back yard, and pay the neighbour's boy to strike up someplace not too near. I won't adjust the ambience controls in a metal box the wrong side of the Neutral Zone in an attempt to fool myself I'm not in Romulan space on a shuttle too small to be a decent refrigerator, and to pretend I'm not in all likelihood about to die an invisible death on a fool's errand."

Kirk smiled at McCoy through a rush of familiar memories.

"Why are you here, then, and not in your back yard, old friend?"

"And leave you and Spock to look after each other? You don't know how tempted I was, Jim, but you'll never sort him out without me. Which brings me back to where I started. You going to answer my question? Why were you talking to him about Flint and Rayna?"

Kirk looked up, mystified.

"I wasn't. I never mentioned either of them. Don't know what you're talking about, Bones. What was it I'm supposed to have said?"

McCoy shrugged.

"Nothing – actually, he never said you brought it up. Just that he mentioned them to me, and I made an assumption. Started me thinking about it again. Hadn't remembered them in years. Don't mean to trample over sensitive places, Jim, but they were an odd pair."

"Flint and Rayna? The android girl? I guess so. No sensitivities for me, Bones. Never think about them myself, either. Not the most memorable of our escapades. But of course," his voice changed tone, "you'd remember it differently. It was Rigelian fever, wasn't it? – and I know we lost some good men before we found the ryetalyn on that planet – Holberg something. Flint's planet. Neither of us was ever much good at it, were we? At losing people. I know why you remember, and I shouldn't have forgotten. You did all you could for them, Bones." He laid a brief hand on McCoy's arm, and the doctor looked down at the hand in recognition, remembering all over again the Jim Kirk of the five year mission whom men would follow too far from home and too near to alien terror. He wondered if Kirk ever knew that sometimes it came down to a hand on a sleeve, a smile, a look of understanding – whilst knowing that it both did and didn't. Kirk was born to command and a starship captain simply knew how to lead with a natural economy of effort which came from sheer instinct.

He said now, curiously, to the owner of the hand of command,

"Actually, I meant Rayna, Jim. You took quite a knock over her, and I knew she'd meant something special to you because you never spoke of her, ever again. It was like it never happened. Not like you."

"Rayna?" Kirk stared. "She was an android, Bones, for God's sake. I do remember, now – Flint made a very good fist of it and she was a pretty thing and highly impressive but – you're way off beam. She never meant anything to me."

McCoy looked at him, consideringly. "Not what it looked like at the time, Jim. I didn't spend so much time as Spock did with you and her – I was off trying to process ryetalyn with that damn robot, but the two of you were pretty friendly, seemed to me."

Kirk laughed, unbelievingly.

"Think you should use the sleep inducer a bit more, Bones. You're off your game."

The blue Georgian gaze was unwavering. "Maybe. Why don't you ask Spock?"

* * *

Which was why he was playing chess again with Spock and waiting for an opportunity to ask him why he had been talking to McCoy about Rayna Kapec, the last years of an ancient wanderer and a fever which had nearly claimed the lives of his crew in a distant star system a long time ago.

"Gravitational field density," he said, suddenly. Spock looked up with a keen glance which said that he knew exactly what Kirk had said and why, and that their thoughts had been in the same place. Kirk nodded at him,

"That was what she wanted to talk to you about, wasn't it? Remember? Rayna Kopec. You were her big chance to discuss gravitational field density."

"That is correct. It was a fascinating conversation. She was exceptionally well advanced in the study of sub-dimensional physics."

Kirk's smile broadened.

"I am sorry, Mr Spock. I can't help feeling that we so often fail you, in very many respects." And then, before the Vulcan could comment, "So? Why did you bring them up, Flint and Rayna, to McCoy? You seem to have given him some slightly strange ideas."

"Sir?"

"Never mind," Kirk said, hastily. "Was there anything you wanted to discuss about Flint?"

"I was seeking," Spock said slowly, "to verify a memory."

Kirk frowned.

"Oh? Why that one, particularly? Why talk to McCoy about it? You certainly piqued his curiosity."

There was a pause, in which Kirk's eyes were pulled away from a bishop in peril to study his friend. It was very unlike the Vulcan to hesitate. What could be troubling him about that long ago errand of mercy?

"Spock?" And then, to lighten the atmosphere and try another approach, he said,

"Wonder if McCoy is struggling with this mission more than I thought. He's not using the sleep inducer, apparently."

"Are you?"

"Me? No." Kirk was a starship captain and when you were a starship captain and you were lying horizontal and the part of you which was half-flesh-half-warp-core told you that the engines were functional, that there was no immediate crisis and that you were off duty, then you went to sleep, simple as that. Because none of those things might be true in five minutes' time and you learned to switch off and regenerate whenever you could, because the ship depended on the crew and the crew depended on the captain and the captain, at the end of the day, depended on certain biological realities, inconvenient though they were. "No. But then I've not been fabricating fantasies about android romances."

He knew that somehow McCoy's strange comment in the last shift was linked to Spock's odd behaviour when Spock said without so much as a raised eyebrow,

"Please specify."

"He's convinced himself I was in love with Rayna Kopec," Kirk said irritably, discovering that the words had found a vulnerable spot somewhere. "There are times, if you want to know, Spock, when this god-damn reputation for womanising really gets to me. I had fewer relationships, and God knows far fewer meaningful relationships, during the whole of the five year mission, than the average man in the street in Iowa, and that's with more women throwing themselves in my path than anyone will ever know. Not that I take that sort of stuff seriously," he added, hastily. "They go with the uniform and the position. Ask any other captain. Truth be told, it's a lonely place to be. I know you know that, you of all people."

He looked at the person who had ensured that it was not a lonely place to be, who had been by several light years the most meaningful relationship of the five year mission, and wished that there was a way of saying so, that this Spock could understand what he was failing to say. The Vulcan looked sombre, even by his usual standards, and Kirk's courage failed him. Spock said, in the tone of one continuing not to answer the question,

"Is the idea of an emotional attachment to a non-human offensive to you, Captain?"

His head snapped up.

"That's damn unfair and I'm not even going to answer it. And there's a hell of a difference between non-human and non-sentient."

"That is self-evident," Spock said. "However, Flint's android was sentient and you did, in fact, form an emotional attachment to her."

There was a brief pause, and then Kirk said,

"Utter nonsense. Maybe you need the sleep inducer, too, Spock. It just didn't happen."

Spock turned to him, then, his eyes more opaque than usual, his words so unexpected Kirk didn't at first understand what he was saying.

"Captain, the reason you are not aware that it happened is that it was never entered in the ship's log and your memory of the salient events was subsequently altered."

A beat, and then – because Spock was so obviously telling the truth, the only possible question,

"By whom?"

"By me, sir."

"Are you serious?"

"That is invariably the case." It would have to be now, Kirk thought irrelevantly, that Spock was making his first joke since Mount Seleya. Or was he? Did Vulcans suffer from nervous tension? _What on earth was Spock trying to tell him?_

"Are you telling me," he said, in a dangerous voice, starship captain to junior ensign, the atmosphere in the cabin a very long way from the encouraging intimacy of the last few days, "are you by any chance telling me that you deliberately engaged a Vulcan mind technique in order to alter my recollection of an official ship's mission, with permanent effect?"

"Yes, sir."

"And do I take it," he continued, torn between anger and astonishment, "that I gave my consent to this?" Although, he thought, how would he ever know? Spock could tell him he'd been AWOL for the relevant timeframe assassinating the Romulan Head of Command, and that he had himself asked Spock to remove the memory in order to protect everyone on the _Enterprise _from detection by the Romulans, and he would never know the truth. He could instead have discovered Spock _in flagrante_ with a sehlat and Spock could have removed the memory to protect himself.

But it appeared that nothing so exciting had taken place - assuming Spock was telling the truth – because the Vulcan said, simply,

"No consent was given."

Of course, Spock would never have made up a story about assassinating the Romulan Head of Command to protect himself anyway, because Vulcans don't lie. Right?

A thousand things fought to be the first to Kirk's lips, and what won sounded like a cork flying from a bottle,

"_You had no right."_

Spock bowed his head while Kirk struggled with an overwhelming sense of betrayal. He had fought to believe that Spock was himself, that the friend he had loved was not permanently gone with his beloved ship in the death fires of Genesis but that the person next to him who had, in any real sense been absent from every day of the five year mission, was still his old familiar companion. He had deliberately taken him down memory lane in the hope that he would somehow meet himself coming back – for his own sake, of course, but also because Kirk wanted that connection back, wanted it so much that on a bad day, when he thought it wasn't going to happen, loneliness reached out for him at night with a cold and unaccustomed touch which made him realise he'd never once really experienced it in all the years on his ship with this person by his side. And it had worked – talking to Spock about Gary, about Edith, even about Garth had actually helped him to see things he'd not seen at the time and to deepen his understanding – Spock's, too – of what they had lived through together.

But this? It turned out that the trust they had built had been a fragile thing. Would this altered Spock in fact do the opposite – not only fail to exist within the personal connection which had meant so much to Kirk, but in fact unravel his memories to show that they had never been what he had thought – had been somehow less than what he had remembered?

How on earth, in fact, would he know what he remembered, now?

And that was when he realised the irony of the situation.

Neither he nor Spock, in a true sense, in their current incarnations, had been there on that planet, whilst McCoy processed ryetalyn in a desperate bid to save the crew from Rigelian fever.

He stared at the Vulcan, and asked the only question he could.

"Why? Tell me why, please."

"As I mentioned, sir, you had formed a deep attachment to Rayna Kopec. You suffered a not insignificant emotional trauma as a result of her death, which was caused by an inability to assimilate and adjust to the competition for her affections between you and Flint. It was Dr McCoy's desire and your own that you could forget what had transpired. Unlike Dr McCoy, I had the means to achieve this. He was not complicit in my actions and, in fact, remains ignorant of them."

Kirk thought through this explanation. It put Spock back where he had always been, not alien mind-stealer but loyal and protective friend, but it still didn't make sense and it did absolutely nothing for the mounting fury inside him. McCoy, had he not, in fact, succumbed to slumber even without the assistance either of caffeine or sleep inducer, could have told him, had he been present, that the anger was only partly caused by Spock's revelation and was also the result of days of stress and frustration and an overwhelming and still largely unvoiced grief only partly assuaged by the events on Mount Seleya. But McCoy, as a result of the earlier conversation with Kirk, was dreaming of the hammock in the back yard of his home in Georgia, with a slight smile on his lips in the darkened cabin twelve metres away.

And so Kirk proceeded to blaze a path to release.

"Look, Commander. I realise that the health and well-being of your captain is legitimately your business. And I also realise you acted from good intentions. But even assuming all this is true – and please don't tell me Vulcans don't lie, this is not a good time for that particular fantasy – it was an outrageous thing to do. It's my mind, damn it! Mine, not yours. What the hell did you think you were doing? What am I, if not my memories? They are what makes me who I am, and so is your so-called emotional trauma. How can I take on board what happens to me and grow and move on if you take the experience away before it's finished? How can I be who I am if I can't remember?"

He paused for breath, all hazel fury, and knew from the look on Spock's face exactly what he had said. He might as well have told Spock in words of one syllable that he doubted the essence of Spock's own identity. They were back to that moment of realisation on day one of the _Polaris _mission, except without the careful reaching out to one another, the willingness to pretend and to heal which had been what carried them through till now, to this torrent of anger and grief, of havoc and destruction. He knew he should stop, but the relief of letting go was too strong.

"And you could have given me the credit, frankly. I know you were always very mindful of your duty to the ship, but don't you think this was carrying it a bit far? I wasn't a teenager, Mr Spock, I could have picked myself up and carried on and kept the ship going and delivered the missions and even kept filing the damn reports. That's what was bothering you, right? The reports? How dare you? What made you do it – go on, tell me now. I've got a right to know; frankly, a right to know if I can trust any other memory of the last couple of decades you may have changed without telling me. How am I supposed to know, Spock? Why did you do it? Tell me why."

Vulcan eyes looked back steadily at human accusation, and Spock remembered the bright colours of his waking dreams, now almost at his peripheral vision, spiky, with sharp edges, sharp enough to slice and cut. Was this how humans lived? Was this what he had courted, allowing Kirk to draw him back into the past – into their past? And what did it mean, this smarting sensation, as though Kirk's words had fists which could aim a blow, and land hard?

His memories of Rayna and Flint had been consciously accessed only after the conversation about Edith Keeler the day before, when Kirk had questioned how much he, Spock, knew about falling in love. He'd heard McCoy's words then - _I feel sorrier for you than I do for him, because you'll never know the things that love can drive a man to. _And he'd gone away and remembered the whole episode, Rayna's golden perfection which had been programmed in such a way that Kirk had never stood a chance. Flint's manipulation. His own helplessness to do anything, even to forestall the revelation awaiting Kirk in Flint's laboratory. He had said to Kirk _Let me go alone, Captain, _but it had been the wrong thing to say and a strategy unlikely to be successful. Letting other people go alone had never been Kirk's forte.

He had become accustomed, over a period of time, to seeing Kirk with women. They had come in various shapes and sizes and they had never lasted. His own reactions had ranged from a concealed and passing concern for the women to a more lasting worry about Kirk's own vulnerability and the restless searching for the next emotional high. He had come to realise, of course, that there was an inevitability about the dynamic, that Kirk was never going to form a permanent relationship – would probably never do so even outside the confines of the mission. There were other starship captains who did, but Kirk was not of that breed. The women had ranged from the In-Another-Universe (Edith Keeler) to In-The-Line-Of-Duty Manipulation (Deela of Scalos) to the Serious Mistake (Janice Lester). They had been safety valve, physical release and occasionally a way out.

Rayna had been different and this had been a part of the reason for Spock's action. He watched the anger in Kirk's face and knew that the accusation was deserved, that it was years over-due. It had been an unforgiveable trespass. He had given in to the impulse set off by McCoy's words in part because Rayna had not been a casual affair, a matter of hormones or frustration or even the complicity of smiles on a dull day at the store. Rayna had been a trap, if not set for Kirk then still a trap, a matter of deliberate programming and multi-processor chips which had nothing to do with Edith Keeler or Miramanee, with love or escapism. In that sense, Kirk had been right – not that love outside homo sapiens was unthinkable, but that this had not been natural and because of that, Spock had been uncertain what recovery would look like. Or when it would come.

Of course, the other reason for what he had done – the main reason – had been McCoy's words. Even now, looking back decades from the perspective of Mount Seleya at what could almost – but not quite – have been another man's actions, he heard the casual, condescending, dismissive echo of _You'll never know. _And he remembered his own stubborn reaction, a moment of rebellion from his human half which had refused to be classified as ignorant, along with Flint's earlier prototypes of Rayna - all now, along with the android herself, reduced to cold microchips with no difference any longer between the circuits which had loved and laughed and those which had just never managed it. He had looked at Kirk's face, haunted even in sleep, and thought simply, _I do know, _and he had proved it both to himself and to a sleeping Kirk whom he would never tell; had put his hands on Kirk and felt passing through his fingertips the loss, the humiliation, the grief; had stood back a moment to watch his captain sleep, the lines on his face restored and then, feeling as though he were trespassing, he had dialled down the lights and left the cabin. Still later, in meditation next to the blackness of the porthole in his quarters, he had consciously set free the distress he had carried away from Kirk, had looked out into the stars and given Rayna a final, silent salute from the man she had loved.

Kirk was still waiting for an answer. And Spock offered him the only one he had, perhaps because he had no other way to deal with Kirk's anger, perhaps because Flint and Rayna and even his hands on Kirk's face still felt like things which had happened to someone else.

"Dr McCoy and you yourself both expressed a wish that you would forget."

Kirk batted it away, like an angry bull bothered by a fly.

"Hardly a reason to steal part of my mind, Mr Spock, although I naturally appreciate the sympathy from both my senior officers. I need a science office and a medical officer, not a personal shrink or a baby-sitter."

The truth, then.

"At the same time, the doctor suggested that I was unable to understand the experience from your perspective, Captain. He felt that your condition was preferable to the absence of any empirical knowledge of emotion."

He could not say more. He willed Kirk to understand. And with a sense of relief washing through him like a thing palpably physical, he saw that, somehow, Kirk did.

The two looked at each other. Kirk was still breathing hard, his anger ebbing from the knockout blow it had just received but adrenaline still flooding his body. Vulcans do not experience adrenalin rushes, nor do they experience fear, but for all that Spock kept absolutely still, like a man exploring debris after an earthquake who knows he may have taken a step too far and sees neither a way forward nor a way back. He waited for the sound of falling buildings, for the ground to give way.

And Kirk, from a different vantage point, in fact felt not very different. He was sufficiently an expert on any Spock to understand exactly what the Vulcan had just said. He wasn't entirely sure that it justified stealing bits of Kirk's brain, but that seemed, for the minute, rather less relevant. His whole being was centred on Spock's words, on this admission, decades after the fact.

It occurred to him that Spock would never have made this admission before Mount Seleya and, after Mount Seleya, might have struggled with the act in the first place, with whatever had driven him to take away Kirk's grief like a modern-day scapegoat. Was that the difference and was it because the Vulcan, like Kirk, saw the past as something which had essentially happened to someone else?

And then Kirk noticed Spock's absolute stillness and knew that this was too simplistic an explanation. _Give me time, Spock, _he thought, then. _Give us both time. _Whether it was the release of anger or the extraordinary benison of Spock's confession – still flooding through him like the warmth of the first rays of sun after a hard winter – he knew he had to stop seeing Spock as two different people. The person in front of him was the one who had once refused to be told that he didn't know how to love. It was as simple as that.

He said, very gently, because he had to,

"Please don't ever do that again, Spock," and immediately wanted both the reassurance that the Vulcan wouldn't use a mind-meld again without permission, and also for Spock not to see this as an invitation to renege.

Spock said,

"I have taken your queen, sir." Startled, he glanced down at the board, and said,

"That wasn't actually what I was talking about."

"Evidently, Captain. You only have one queen. In fact, at the current time, I fear you have none at all." There was a moment when their eyes met, and then Kirk laughed, let laughter take the tension instead of anger, forgetting to worry that he might wake McCoy. He heard a noise in the other cabin and stood to stretch, still smiling.

"Guess it's my turn to leave you with the con, Mr Spock," he said, and as he passed the Vulcan, he dropped his hand and gripped Spock's shoulder hard. It was the only answer he could find for Spock's confession, and he thought it was enough.


End file.
